


Long Way Home

by Snickfic



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Post-Apocalypse, Road Trips, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pandemic has swept the country, and the people Jensen cared about most in the world are dead. Now Jensen, his best friend Jared, and Jared’s girlfriend Gen flee Seattle and strike out for Texas to find Jared’s family. But it’s two thousand miles from here to there, and the trio’s passage through a world that will never be the same begins to change their relationship into something it’s never been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [SPN Reversebang 2012](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com), with full art masterpost and fanmix by onceuponarhi [here](http://onceuponarhi.livejournal.com/234018.html).

It takes Gen half the morning to persuade Jared it’s time to leave. He’s convinced there’s someone they should be telling. “What about Drake? I mean, we might not be back—” 

“Probably not,” Gen agree, and shoves him towards the door. It gains her a couple of inches; a girl her size is not going to shift a guy Jared’s size unless he wants to be shifted. Another day, it might be funny.

“—and we should let him know—”

“Drake’s dead, Jared.” Gen doesn’t actually know this; no one’s _told_ her the building supe is dead, and she hasn’t seen a body. But she hasn’t seen him alive in days, and that’s certainty enough for her.

Anyway, it’s not like she gives a damn. “ _Jensen_ ,” she tells Jared. “If we don’t get Jensen out of here, I don’t know what he’s going to do.” That’s closer to the truth. There’s not a lot left of Genevieve Cortese just now, but what there is is very worried about Jensen.

This, finally, is an argument Jared hears. He lets her push him the rest of the way out their door and down the one flight of stairs. 

Jensen’s sitting in the 4Runner, his eyes and expression hidden behind his aviators. Even since he finished packing the gear, he’s been sitting there – desperate, Gen thinks, to get away from the mass grave where his dad and sister are decomposing right now. And Gen, she is by God as ready to get out this city, this state, this unbelievable nightmarish future as Jensen is, even though her parents have been lying peacefully under a cemetery lawn for years.

Jensen doesn’t say anything as Jared climbs in the front passenger seat. Gen bundles one last grocery bag of canned food under the back seat, slams her door shut, and buckles her seat belt. 

“So, Texas,” Jared says. 

“Texas,” Jensen confirms. His voice is dry like powder. Gen remembers him now, this closed, unknowable guy with the razor tongue, her boyfriend’s terrifying platonic lifemate. She hasn’t thought of Jensen that way in years. He says, “Guess we should start by getting out of Seattle.”

“I can plan our route,” Jared says, for all like this is a vacation and they’re going to spend it driving to Mount Rushmore. He spreads a road map across his knees. Gen’s pretty sure the map is only for Washington and Oregon. A conflicted sound bubbles in the back of her throat; she can’t tell whether it’s a laugh or a sob. She swallows it down.

“We should probably stay off the freeways, right?” Jared asks. “At least until we get out of the city.”

“Why?” Gen asks. “You afraid of hitting the morning rush?” 

With the power off – and the TV signal, too, probably, not that they have any way of telling – the only news they’ve had in days is what’s been passed around the apartment complex. Not in face-to-face conversation, because no one dares get so close to another human being, but shouted across the parking lot or from windows cracked open. What few rumors they’ve heard about the roads are contradictory: they’re desolate and empty; they’re jammed with the cars of people who tried to get away from the disease and died in transit.

There’s no traffic on the streets now, though. “Look,” Gen says. “If 405 is packed, we can always just, like, turn around and go back up the on-ramp, because I sure don’t see anyone coming up behind us.”

Jensen doesn’t say a word through it all. He takes the turn onto the on-ramp, which is a point for Gen, she supposes. For all the acknowledgement he makes, he might not have even heard them argue.

The freeway is desolate. There’s a car pulled onto the shoulder here and there, but Gen’s seen worse during the winter when the roads turn slick. “Probably keep an eye out for debris,” she cautions. Jensen grunts. It’s the first thing he’s said to her today, and Gen is pathetically grateful for it. 

In ten minutes they take the ramp onto I-90, and then they fly. They’re up the Cascades in less than an hour. Snoqualmie Pass is pristine, air clear, sky blue, like the landscape of another life. Down the other side , they pass a couple of cars going the other direction. Gen stares at the people in them. They look straight ahead, mouths pinched, and make no eye contact.

Jared hums to himself, Christmas songs and TV jingles and the occasional 80s ballad. Half of Gen wants to slap him – doesn’t he get it? doesn’t he get that their world is _over_ , that he is possibly the last person on the planet to remember the “Sometimes you feel like a nut” commercial? – and half of her wants to curl up in the warmth of his voice and never leave. It’s gotta be safer there. Cheerful.

For a while there, she thinks Jensen might slap Jared for her. Or he might be miles away. He’s like the people in those other cars, his shoulders rigid, his stare fixed on the road ahead. He’s going to be sore tonight, Gen thinks.

She reaches up to ruffle the hairs on Jared’s arm. He grips her hand, and they stay like that awhile, until Gen’s back starts to ache from the awkward position and she pulls away. She arranges herself on the back seat, head pillowed on Jared’s duffel. She dozes.

\--

Jensen doesn’t think about what lies behind him. There’s no point. He doesn’t think about what’s ahead, either, beyond the road opening out before him. There’s a destination he’s pointed at, and he’ll get them there, because Jared needs it and Gen needs Jared. There’s nothing there for Jensen, though. 

He doesn’t think about it.

They’re almost at a quarter-tank when they reach the outskirts of the Tri-Cities. Once they get past Pendleton, it’s going to be a lot of hours of empty countryside. Jensen pulls off the freeway, and Gen sits up. She blinks at him in the rearview mirror. 

“Gas,” he says, and she nods. Jared sleeps on.

Jensen turns in at a Fred Meyer and pulls up next to a nondescript little coupe. The store’s closed and looks like it has been for days; the car’s owner almost certainly won’t be coming back. 

Gen makes a confused noise. “Power’s out,” Jensen explains. No convenience store gas for them. He goes around to the back of the 4Runner and gets the hosing he brought along for the purpose. He’s siphoned gas before, and it doesn’t take long. 

When he gets back into the car, Jared’s munching on one of the cucumbers he insisted they bring on the grounds that they’d go bad otherwise. Gen squeezes Jensen’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?” she asks.

“I’m good for now,” he says. “We can switch off in a few hours if you want.” 

Gen twists her lips in disappointment. Tough shit. The car’s his, and the _road’s_ his, and they’re the only things left that are. He’s not giving them up.

\--

Jensen never does hand over the wheel, not that Gen really minds. They’re a half an hour past Boise – via a long, circuitous route on country highways, to avoid any possible tangle in the city itself – when Jensen suggests they pull over for the night. 

Anything so cushy as a motel bed – or even one in some abandoned house – is out of the question. People are a bad, bad idea. People mean contagion, and even if they don’t, they won’t trust the health of outsiders any more than Gen and Jared and Jensen trust them. 

Instead, Jensen finds a park with campsites. That means chemical toilets – which still function, unlike anything that requires running water – and a flat place to pitch their tent, and a fire pit they don’t have to make themselves.

They get started unpacking the camping gear. When Jensen organized this trip, he made sure there were enough sleeping bags to go around and insulating pads to lay them on, a big enough tent, a Coleman lantern, thermal underwear - _“Jensen, it’s the middle of July.” “Doesn’t matter.”_ \- starter fluid, enough first aid supplies to dress every wound at Gettysburg, and on and on. Gen can’t believe – doesn’t dare imagine – that they’ll need half of what Jensen wedged into the 4Runner. It’s like a circus trick, the way Jensen fit it all in, except with survival supplies instead of clowns.

Guns, too, although Gen doubts Jensen realizes she saw those. Gen isn’t comfortable around guns, but in the abstract she understands that Jared and Jensen are Texas boys, and that means taking certain things for granted. In practice, she really, really hopes there’s never any call to bring them out, much less use them.

\--

Jared chatters while they eat. Gen would think he was oblivious to it all, to what they left behind, except for how every so often his eyes will slide over to Jensen and slide away again, just a little more worried than before.

Maybe it will always be this way, she thinks as puts the last of the food into the cooler. Maybe they will drive on forever on empty highways and make camp in campgrounds and rest stops that will never see use again. Maybe this is the afterlife, and they’re actually already dead.

Maybe the distinction is irrelevant.

“Maybe you think too much,” is Jared’s response, once she suggests a little bit of it to him. “Look, we’ll get to Austin, and my parents will put you guys up” – which presumably is code for _let you live with them_ , because where else is Gen going to go? Or Jensen? – “and things will start looking up.”

He’s untouched, is Jared. Untouchable, maybe. 

Gen doesn’t want to think about what they might find in Austin.

Jensen’s within range of the whole discussion, but he doesn’t add anything. Gen isn’t sure he hears it. It’s dark enough now that he’s taken his glasses off, though seeing his eyes isn’t giving her any new information. His shoulders look stiff. She walks around the table and sits on the picnic bench next to him.

Words seem pointless. He’s like a rain slicker: she’s pretty sure anything she said would roll right off of him and puddle at her feet. Anyway, she knows the banality of words spoken to the grief-stricken; she endured enough of them herself when her parents died. She won’t inflict them on him.

Instead she lays a hand on his arm. She half expects him to be hard to the touch, like marble; she’s almost surprised to feel warm, living flesh under her fingers. When Jensen doesn’t say anything or move away, doesn’t do anything at all to imply that she’s unwelcome – or welcome, either, but she’s ignoring that – she scoots closer until they’re touching, shoulder to shoulder.

They sit like that a while. Jared, back from somewhere – peeing, Gen assumes – crouches next to the fire and starts poking at it. He can keep that up for hours, she knows, especially if he’s got something for fuel, like the fir cones that are scattered all over the ground. 

Sometime later, Jensen slowly turns to look at her. She can’t read his expression.

To break the silence, Gen says, “Back rub?” 

There’s a long moment before Jensen nods. “Okay.” 

“Probably easier if you straddle the bench,” Gen says. After a pause, Jensen throws a leg over, and she scoots up behind him and starts to work his shoulders. She was right; they’re more knot than muscle.

“You could let one of us drive tomorrow,” she says. “You wouldn’t be so sore.”

“It’s fine,” he says. She can feel his words through her hands.

“If we switched off, we could get there in another couple of days, couldn’t we?”

He stiffens up even more, if that’s possible. He twists around to look over his shoulder at her and asks, “We’ve been fine, haven’t we? You and Jared, you’re fine?”

It seems like a weird word to emphasize, given the circumstances, but they’re not sick or injured or catatonic, so, sure. “Yeah, we’re fine.”

“Then...?” For a moment she sees something in his eyes, an honest-to-God emotion. He looks utterly lost.

“Never mind,” Gen says. “Just let us know if you need a break.”

“I will,” he says. 

Eventually Gen works out most of the stiffness in his shoulders and moves down to his back. Her thumbs give out long before she’s finished, but Jensen doesn’t seem bothered when she stops. 

“Thanks,” he mutters. He gets up and strides purposefully towards the 4Runner.

Gen’s been sitting so long that she’s stiff, too. She gets up and stands next to Jared, still crouching at the fire. 

“Something wrong?” Jared asks, straightening up.

Gen realizes that she’s staring at Jensen, who’s standing at the car’s open door and fidgeting with something. 

Jared follows her gaze. “Jensen, man. Give it a rest and come do something to this fire. I think it’s dead.” 

Something in Gen loosens in relief. She folds her hand into Jared’s, which gets his attention, and then she stands up on her tiptoes and leans into him. It’s their signal. Immediately, reflexively, he palms her shoulder and bends down to kissing height. He tastes like always, and it’s warm and familiar and tinged with garlic from the chips he munched on with dinner. It makes her want to cry. Her breath starts to hitch before she can hold it in.

“Hey,” Jared murmurs. “Hey, what is it?”

Like _Everyone is dead_ isn’t enough to bring a girl to tears? But it wasn’t five minutes ago. Gen tries to trace her thoughts backwards, and finally she settles on, “You can still read my mind.”

Jared chuckles. “What?”

Gen peeks around him, and there’s Jensen, staring blankly at them. Gen flushes; she didn’t mean to make a display. Still, she can’t help burying her face in Jared’s chest. His arms wrap around her, enfolding and secure. “I’m worried about Jensen,” she whispers.

Jared’s hold on her tightens. “I know. Me, too.”

\--

Jared has a hard time getting through the evening. He’s never not been a physical guy, and he’s never been shy about touching Gen. She usually endures it with good grace, whether he pulls her into his lap at a frat party he’s dragged her to or the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. Lately, though - since the first day he showed up to wait tables and found Luigi’s closed to business – it feels like every inch of him needs to be in contact with her.

Gen packs away the garbage on the picnic table, and Jared leans over to nuzzle her hair. She passes by him on the way to the car, and he pulls her in for a kiss that heats up and melts down into some serious foreplay.

“ _Jared_ ,” Gen whispers sharply, pushing herself off from him. “Not appropriate right now.”

He feels himself flush with shame. “I’m, God, I’m sorry.”

Softening, she whispers, “Jensen. It’s not fair.”

Jared hears that, he does. And yet his hand’s already reaching towards her. He doesn’t know what he’s aiming for, which turns out not to matter, because she catches his hand with both of hers. “Can’t I just hold you?” he pleads.

“Tonight,” she promises. “We’ll join up our sleeping bags.”

Jared nods jerkily and lets her go.

He knows things aren’t quite right with him; he’s been catching the look in Gen’s eye, the same one she throws him at parties around the time he has a baby carrot up each nostril. However, her usual embarrassment and annoyance is cut with something else he can’t put a name to. He doubts she could either, if he asked.

But Jared can’t help the things he says. They burble out of him without any input on his part. There’s a buzz in him, an unwell energy racing along his nerves and jerking his muscles, and he knows if it ever flags he’ll just. stop. He lets it flow out of him in stupid puns and snippets of song, on the theory that the energy’ll keep on coming just so long as nothing stops it up. 

He doesn’t really know if his family will be alive when they get to Austin. He and Jensen and Gen haven’t even discussed what they’re going to do when they _get_ to Austin. Jensen refuses to drive through cities and won’t stop at rest stops. Jared knows Jensen’s got a revolver under the driver’s seat, and every time they come up on another car – it hasn’t happened often, maybe five times total today – Jared can see Jensen turn twitchy.

So Jared’s family’s probably dead, except he won’t let himself think about that, or else they’re alive and huddled away somewhere Jared could never find them even if Jensen gave him the chance to, which Jared doesn’t dare consider either.

Instead he’s got this: Gen and Jensen and weird manic laughter lurking at the back of his throat, which he manages to stifle, mostly. He’s got Gen’s lips and her eyebrows like streaks of pure sarcasm and dark hair that she lets him bury his face in pretty much whenever he wants. He’s got her little sharp gasps of pleasure-pain as he teases into her with his finger, and...

And the world is ended. Now is not the time to be giving himself a boner.

Inappropriate is right. He’s never been anything else. He’s never really tried. Now he’s not sure he could if he wanted to.

\--

Jensen pitches the tent while Gen’s back is turned, it feels like. She wonders if this is what it was like having a butler, back when people had butlers: silent, efficient, anticipating your every need. Or maybe she’s thinking of valets instead. 

She ought to just appreciate it. It’s not like she loves putting up tents. Only now that Jensen’s finished, he’s standing there staring at the fire, his hands buried in his pockets, and she’s not sure he won’t stand there all night unless someone says something.

The sticky heat is leaking away, and the sweat of the day is starting to chill on Gen’s skin. She wishes for a shower. Maybe tomorrow they can pick a campsite near a lake. Hell, maybe tomorrow night Jensen will break out the marshmallows and chocolate and they can all make s’mores. They’ll sit around the campfire and tell stories of old ghosts, spirits that died of respectable things like suicide and murder, not the creeping subterfuge of microbes. Jensen’s story will be by far the most unsettling, and when he’s finished and she and Jared are thoroughly creeped out, Jensen will laugh out loud, and his eyes will crinkle in the corners.

“Gen?” Here’s Jensen now, peering at her in worry. She doesn’t understand why, and she’s startled when he lifts a hand toward her face. His finger brushes her cheek, and when it retreats she can see that it’s wet.

Suddenly her breath has gotten all wobbly. “It’s nothing,” she says.

Jensen’s eyebrows peak in that oh-so-familiar concern. His hand falls to his side, limp.

“I’m fine,” Gen says. “Are we all ready for bed?”

“Uh, yeah. Everything’s secure.”

Not precisely what Gen meant, but close enough. 

\--

Jensen sits cross-legged on his sleeping bag with a flashlight within reach of his right hand, a sheathed knife to his left. 

It’s high summer at night in country that comes just a few precipitative inches shy of desert. Jensen’s spent time in places like this before; his dad’s taken him hunting for antelope in low brown hills just like these. Rattlesnakes are the main hazard, at least in summer. There are no people but Gen and Jared and him for miles, dead or alive, he’s pretty sure, and his revolver’s tucked behind his duffel, just in case.

Gen and Jared are murmuring to each other between their sleeping-blanket sheets. The material swishes softly against itself as they shift. Farther off, crickets chirp in a chorus that blankets miles.

From out of the dark, Jared whispers, “Jensen.”

It takes Jensen a moment to answer. “Yeah?”

“Are you going to sleep or what?”

“I’m fine,” Jensen says. 

The sleeping bag next to him rustles. From an altitude level with his ear, Gen says, “So am I driving tomorrow?”

Jensen snorts. “Like I’m ever letting you touch my car.” The words are automatic, already spliced together.

“Well, _you’re_ not driving unless you sleep tonight,” Jared says. “I’ll hogtie you and lash you to the luggage rack.”

“I’m fine,” Jensen says.

“You keep saying that,” Gen says.

Jensen doesn’t have an answer for that. All his conversation is already pre-fabricated, old retorts waiting to be made again, old assurances ready for further use. He only has so many, though, and Gen’s gone off-script. “It’s not safe,” he says finally. That one’s done him well, the last couple of days. It’s kept them all whole.

Something touches his arm, and he flinches. “Shh,” Gen says. “It’s just me.”

“You guys sleep,” Jensen says. “I’ll be fine.”

She rubs at his shoulder, up and down. He closes his eyes to the dark and listens to the friction of her fingers against his shirtsleeve. The pressure of it warms his skin. After a while it stops, and Jensen jerks himself awake. “Go to sleep,” he says. He can’t get distracted like this. He has to keep watch.

“Come on,” Gen says. Her hand closes around his arm. “Come to bed.”

“What?” he stutters out. But she doesn’t answer; she grips him harder and begins to tug. “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” she repeats.

He doesn’t understand, but he gets up onto his knees and follows her across the foot of tent that separates him from them. “You should bring your sleeping bag,” Gen adds.

Jensen doesn’t ask. He leans over for a handful of synthetic fabric and polyfiber fill, and he pulls it along behind him until he’s somewhere in the middle of Jared and Gen’s sleeping bag nest. Jared’s up against one wall of the tent - Jensen can tell by the way the tent is heaving around them - and Gen’s at Jensen’s side. “You go here,” Gen says, and lets go.

“I have to keep watch,” he says again.

“Nobody’s coming after us, man” Jared says. He sounds only half-conscious.“It’s not the zombie apocalypse.” He’s right at Jensen’s elbow, and Jensen startles, but Gen’s on his other side, and now she’s tugging at him again, downward. 

“Bedtime,” she says firmly in that voice he’s heard her use when babysitting the neighbor kid from the apartment next door – the kid that belonged to the family Gen says is dead.

The thought freezes him. He can’t be lying down. “My revolver—”

“Stays over there,” Gen finishes for him. He remembers now that he wasn’t going to tell her about the revolver. He knows how jumpy she is around guns; he wasn’t going to bring his into the open unless he had to. But all Gen says is, “ _Sleep_.”

Now Jared’s hands are on his shoulders, heavy and certain as gravity, and Jensen struggles under them.

“Please?” Gen says in his ear. Her breath is warm, and it tickles. Her hand slides up his arm. “It’s okay. We’re safe. Promise.”

 _You can’t promise that,_ he wants to say, but he can’t force the words from his throat. While he’s still trying, Jared and Gen pull him down until he’s lying on his side between them. There’s some shuffling and rustling, and at one point Gen knees him in the shin as she gets settled. Jared closes in behind him, a spindly furnace at his back whose knobbiest joints all seem to be in contact with Jensen. 

He can’t sleep. He has to keep them safe. He can’t respond to threats when he’s tangled up with other people’s bodies like this.

Gen’s insistent fingers slide his t-shirt sleeve up, and her hair brushes his skin as she kisses his shoulder. “Shhhhh,” she says. Then she folds herself in against his chest until there’s no place to put his arm but over her.

They breathe against him, one on each side, and the rhythm of it steadies something in him. Maybe here they’re okay, for a little while. Maybe here it’s safe.

He can’t really believe that, but his body believes for him, and he lets go.

\--

Someone jostles Jared awake, and suddenly the heat he’s been snuggling pulls away. There’s nothing left but a gaping drafty hole . He pulls the sleeping bag tighter over his shoulders and barely hears the door of the tent as it unzips and zips again

A few minutes later, he hears banging from outside the tent. Metal, he thinks muzzily. To keep bears away.

The next thing he knows, someone’s shoving at his shoulder. “Come on, sleepyhead.” It’s Gen’s voice, but Gen wouldn’t be so cruel as to drag out him into that air that is, he knows by sheer instinct, much, much too cold for contact with human skin. He groans out some fraction of this train of thought.

The hands shove again. “Come on, I think Jensen’s getting antsy.” That’s enough to pop Jared’s eyes open. Gen’s face is hanging over his. “Hey,” she says fondly. He blinks, and she pushes hair out of his eyes. “There’s breakfast,” she sing-songs.

Jared shoves himself upright and snakes his hands around her shoulders. “I like breakfast,” he says, and leans in to catch her mouth before she can pull away. She stiffens for a moment, but then she relaxes, opening her mouth to tease at his lip with her teeth.

Something clanks outside, and Gen startles backwards. Jared falters, off-balance at the loss of contact. “We should get going,” Gen says. She gets to her feet, and Jared reluctantly follows, snagging his hoodie on the way.

He’s right, it’s too cold out for a human being who spent all night as one bread slice of a sandwich and way too early for one who made a point to never take classes before ten. It’s kind of pretty, though, Jared thinks. Southern Idaho is not on anybody’s top ten list of postcard views, but now, the shadows long and the light a warm glow behind the hills, there’s something in it, something quiet and clean, that he likes.

He sidles up next to Jensen at the fire. Jensen shies a little to one side and then meets Jared’s eyes. He peers like he’s searching for something, but damn if Jared knows what it is. “How’d you sleep?” Jared asks.

“Good,” Jensen says. His eyes narrow, and he keeps on looking. 

Screw this. It’s too early in the morning for dominance rituals, or whatever the hell this staring contest is. Jared turns aside, shoulders up against Jensen, and stays there. Jensen’s warm, just like last night, and kind of tense, like Jared remembers him being in the ten seconds or so before Jared fell asleep. Jensen huffs, but he doesn’t move. That feels like a victory, although Jared’s not really conscious enough to remember what kind.

Gen joins them at the fire. Jared pulls her in and tucks him under his arm. She lets him. This is good, he thinks. He likes them here, his people, one snug on each side. “I think it’s going to rain,” she says.

Now that she’s said it, Jared feels it: a heaviness in the air. “It doesn’t rain here, does it? Not in the summer.”

“Plenty of thunderstorms, though,” Jensen says. He shifts away from Jared. “We should get a move on. Austin ain’t getting any closer.”

The distant rumble Jared was ignoring suddenly rolls through him like a crack of thunder. He forgot. 

He forgot.

“Jared?” asks Gen.

“I’ll DJ,” he says. “My IPod’s still got battery for a day or so. Who’s up for some Queen?”

\--

Gen rides shotgun today. There’s nothing to look at. The landscape’s boring, just brown and more dusty brown. She keeps the window halfway down to try and defuse some of the heat. Jensen won’t turn on the A/C; he says they’re conserving gas.

Other than brief, absolute directives like those, he’s still not talking. She tries a couple of times to make conversation, but his answers keep getting shorter, and finally she gives up. Every so often she asks him how he’s doing, and after he grunts or repeats his mantra of “fine,” she gives his arm another rub.

She keeps expecting him to ask her about that. They’ve never been all that touchy-feely. They get along fine, but he’s Jared’s friend, and even he and Jared always grounded that friendship in the universally-approved physicality of boys: shoving and wrestling and dunks in the pool. Every time Gen looks at Jensen, though, hiding behind his sunglasses, he seems more distant, journeying ever farther in his thoughts even as he sits there with the wheel in his hands. She wants to hold onto him before he drifts away right before her eyes.

So she keeps patting his shoulder or brushing her elbow against his leg as she reaches around to hunt for a water bottle, and he keeps not saying anything. She misses Jared, though, all the way in the back seat. Sometimes she reaches around behind her and he grips her hand for a while until her shoulder starts to ache.

They haven’t seen another living soul since they woke up this morning.

They pull off onto the shoulder for a lunch break. As soon as they roll to a stop, Jared jumps out of the car, hops the guardrail, and disappears over the side. “Anything dangerous?” Gen asks when he comes back a couple of minutes later.

He shrugs. “Couple of tarantulas.”

Gen is very, very still, and she stares at him very hard. It’s a good ten seconds before he breaks into a grin. Then he leans down and kisses her, quick and sloppy, and strolls on past. “You _ass_ ,” she calls after him.

She already dug a roll of toilet paper out of the car. Now she crawls over the guardrail and a little ways down the embankment, careful not to touch any wet spots on the way. Or any tarantulas. When she gets back, Jensen snags the toilet paper from her and strides away like a man with a purpose. 

Jared sidles up next to her. “What are you thinking?” he asks.

“Was it weird, last night?”

Jared toes at a rock with his shoe. “With Jensen?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugs. “It was good. I think... yeah, I think it was good. We needed it, you know? All of us.”

She thinks she has him all figured out, and then he surprises her. Always. “Yeah.” She waits through another pause. “So, not weird cuddling with the platonic lifemate?”

Jared’s grin turns wicked. “Just because he’s my best friend doesn’t mean I don’t have _eyes_.”

Gen snorts. That’s as much answer as she’ll get, she supposes. “We should keep doing it.”

“Yeah.” Jared throws an arm over her shoulder and pulls her in close. She feel the heat of his breath on the top of her head. Softly, he says, “Yeah, we should.”

They’re standing there like that, a damp, sweaty border joining them, shoulder to hip, when Gen hears a distant noise. It’s a vaguely familiar noise, but it takes her a moment to recognize it. “Car,” she yelps. She wriggles out of Jared’s embrace for a better look. They’re pulled off on a hill; dumb, probably, but it wasn’t like they were worried about traffic. Now, though, she can hear the mutter of an engine approaching. 

Jensen jogs past them. “Get in the car. Get in the car!” He’s already pulled open the driver door. He’s going for the gun, Gen realizes. 

“Jared!”

“It’s okay, come on, get in the car. Roll up the windows!”

Gen scrambles into the back and thanks heaven that the windows are manual. She rolls them up to the top, as though they were airtight, which, hah. Jensen’s going to peel out, she thinks. Is that really necessary? Do they have to? It might just be another load of college kids on a quest, like them.

But they’re not peeling out, because dear God, Jensen’s standing at the driver’s side door, watching the road. She wants to yell at him to get in, get the hell away from anyone who might be a carrier – if the disease even has carriers, if it’s even a disease, no one knew and now no one’s alive to find out – but he keeps on standing there. His shoulders are back, his hands hanging loose at his sides, but Gen can see just around his leg to the sleek black threat of the revolver’s muzzle.

This is dumb. Is this dumb? It’s dangerous. There’s no way it’s not.

Gen follows Jensen’s line of sight as the car crests the hill. It’s a pick-up truck, actually, one that’s seen probably twenty years of better days. Past the glare on the windshield, Gen can just make out a figure at the wheel. The truck was only going maybe thirty-five to begin with, and now it pulls to a sharp stop. Jensen makes no move.

A head pokes out over the roof of the pick-up cab. It’s a man, Gen sees, older, maybe fifties. He’s yelling to Jensen, but Gen can’t make out the words. Jensen doesn’t relax, but he doesn’t open fire, either. He calls something back. They yell back and forth a couple more times, and then the other man drops back down into his truck. Pretty soon it drives on past them. Jensen turns to watch it until it’s out of sight, and then for another half-minute or so after. Finally he raises the revolver – clicking the safety on, Gen realizes, and feels a fresh chill – and then he opens his door and climbs in.

“What did he say?” Gen asks.

“Wanted to know if we’d broken down.”

“When were you planning to shoot him?” Jared asks.

Jensen shrugs. “I wasn’t, unless he tried to get close.”

“Color me relieved,” Jared says drily.

Jensen turns a sour look on him, and something in Gen’s chest seizes up. “I’m not letting anything happen to you guys, okay? Nobody’s gonna touch you or breathe your air. Not on my watch.”

“Okay, man. Jensen, it’s okay.”

Jensen snorts. “Dude, _I_ know it is. Do you know it is?” For a moment he sounds like his old self from ages – weeks – ago, and Gen could cry for how much she misses that Jensen. Then he seems to slough it off, like the itchy remains of an old skin. “Let’s get on the road,” he says. “If we hit up the next little burg for gas, I think I can get us out of Utah by nightfall.”

\--

That night, Jensen finds them a campsite on a reservoir just inside Colorado. There’s a discussion first – what if the disease is waterborne? What if the reservoir is contaminated? – but Gen eventually says: “The air might be contaminated, too. Are we going to stop breathing now?”

Jensen gives her a long, hard look.

Gen’s a better man than Jared; she doesn’t quail a bit. Her expression softens, and she says, “I’m not going to never get clean again because I _might_ die of something that _might_ travel through water. Okay?”

Jensen takes a deep breath, and he nods. “Okay.”

Jared’s unspeakably grateful for this outcome. The sky above them is a mood-dampening gray, but that’s all it’s dampened so far, and his shirt’s sweat-soaked and starting to chafe. He hangs around the car long enough for Jensen to satisfy himself that they’re alone, and then Jared’s racing for the water.

There’s no beach to speak of; the reservoir doesn’t look like it’s been around all that long, and its shores are stump-lined. The slope he’s on drops straight into the water and probably keeps right on going. There’s a boat ramp, though, and as soon as Jared strips down to his boxers, he walks down it into the water.

The water’s still cool, even in July. It laps at his calves as he steps further in. When he reaches the edge of the ramp, he has to go more slowly; the last thing he needs is to gash his foot open and get an infection. Finally he’s all the way in, the water up to his chest and deep enough to float in, and he flops onto his back and basks. 

This is it. This is all he wants to do for the rest of his probably short and grief-stricken life. He wants to float here on the surface of a man-made lake in the southwestern tip of Colorado. Probably sometimes he’ll want to get out and find something to eat. Jared’s no engineer, but Jensen’s pretty handy with mechanical things; probably between them they could figure out how to siphon power off the hydroelectric plant at the end of the reservoir, and he and Jensen could hunt and fish. They’d put Gen in charge of figuring out how to make traps, for when the ammo ran out.

Jared’s just gotten to the construction of the log cabin – easier to do with horses, maybe they can take the 4Runner on a raid – when suddenly a sheet of water shears over his face. He flails upright, wipes the water out of his eyes, and opens them to find Gen grinning at him from a few feet away. She’s in nothing but underwear, too. “Whatcha thinking?” she asks.

“I think you and I should build a cabin on this lake and make babies.”

Gen snorts a laugh. “Oh, you do. You planning on serving up an epidural when I go into labor?”

“Sure,” Jared says, although he has only a hazy idea what that is.

“And what about Jensen?”

The question pulls Jared’s wandering fantasy to a halt. He glances up the bank, where Jensen is pulling off his tennis shoes. “Built-in babysitter?” Jared offers. But the fun’s over; the fantasy’s soured.

He knows Gen feels it, too; her dark eyes have gone serious. “And your parents?”

Jared ducks into the water up to his neck to distract himself from looking at her. “I’m sure they’d be hanging around somewhere.”

Gen splashes over to him, finds his hand, and squeezes.

“Don’t get any of it your mouth,” Jensen calls. “Or your eyes, if you can help it.”

Gen’s eyes grow huge. Her hand rises to Jared’s face, and her thumb brushes damp hair away from his eyes. “It’s fine,” he whispers to her. “If it’s in the water, pretty sure we’re screwed either way.”

She nods, slow and terrified, and he can’t help it; he bends down and kisses her. On the cheek, not the lips, because hell, still better safe than sorry. He follows the line of her jaw to the sensitive place just below her ear. She gasps, and a hand rubs aimlessly up and down his arms. The water’s cold and she’s warm and he knows from glorious experience that she’s even warmer inside than out. She’s buoyant here; he could cup her gorgeous ass in his hands and lift her to just the right height, and she’d wrap her legs around him and make him forget the chill altogether.

Gen pushes at his chest, and he opens his eyes. She’s looking past him, and he twists to see Jensen staring blankly back.

Jared has a weird moment. For one hallucinogenic instant, the obvious thing to do is wave Jensen over, too. In his mind’s eye, Jared sees himself sliding his hand up Jensen’s stubbly jaw, drawing him in and kissing him like in those idle daydreams Jared used to entertain. 

Then Jensen calls across the water, “You guys want the soap?” He holds Gen’s bottle of body wash over his head.

“Just leave it,” Gen calls back.

Jensen turns away and starts back up the boat ramp, and Jared realizes Gen’s staring up at him. “What?” he asks.

She shakes her head. His arms gripped tight in her hands, she says, “Just screw me already.”

Far be it from Jared to turn down an invitation like _that_.

\--

When Gen and Jared get back up to the car, they find Jensen’s already pitched the tent and has a campfire half-built. Gen sneaks around behind the 4Runner to swap into fresh underwear – thank God she has plenty of that still – and put on some clothes. She feels a thousand percent better now. Her hair may smell like lake weed, but at least her skin isn’t sticking to itself anymore.

Dinner is more stuff in cans. Jared grumbles about it, and Jensen gives him a speech about perishable, calorie-dense foods, which seems to boil down to: stale bread would have taken up too much room, so shut up and eat your sandwich-free tuna.

Gen makes a point of taking a spot on the ground next to Jensen – no picnic table, since this isn’t technically a picnic area, or a camping area, either, although it isn’t like anyone’s going to come finger-wagging now. Jensen glances over and gives her something that could grow into a smile, if it were watered and given lots of sunshine. On impulse, she scoots in and shoulders under his arm. After a puff of laughter, he settles the arm around her.

Jared’s got that look in his eye again, the one she saw out on the lake, a faraway, speculative look. She still doesn’t know how to read it, and gives up trying.

The sun’s barely set when they head towards the tent. All this sitting in the car is exhausting, not to mention the spike of adrenaline when they met that car earlier today or the exercise she and Jared got in the lake. She’s bone-weary. She crawls in and sits on her and Jared’s sleeping bags. Jensen put them together, she notices, while his is over on the other side of the tent.

Jared scrambles through the tent flap and shoves playfully at her until she moves so that he can get underneath the sleeping bag she’s sitting on. Jensen’s last, and Gen watches him crawl over to his bag without looking at either of them. 

Maybe better to ask, this time. “Jensen?” He turns to look at her. Gen takes a deep breath. “Do you want to come sleep with us?”

When he doesn’t respond, she wonders whether they’re justified in insisting two nights in a row, or whether they ought to leave him to his own devices. Then he nods. “Yeah, sure.” Nonchalant, like this isn’t even a thing. He knee-walks over to them and then pauses, looking lost.

This, she has no qualms about helping him along with. “Inside or outside?”

The question doesn’t seem to help him. “Um.”

“Inside,” Gen decides. She scoots over to let him past her, next to Jared, and then she helps him arrange the two top sleeping bags over the three of them. Again, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself, so she curls up into his side and rests her arm on his bicep. “G’night, Jared,” she calls.

“Night.”

Softer, she says, “Good night, Jensen.”

There’s a pause, and he whispers, “Good night.”

Gen presses herself a little more firmly against him before she drifts off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Like yesterday, Jensen’s the first one to stir. Gen has her face pressed into his t-shirt, and Jared’s arm is slung over both of them. Jensen would expect it to feel stifling, closed in, but the air’s cooled enough that he appreciates their body heat, and as long as he can touch them both, as long as they’re both _right here_ , he doesn’t have to worry about them.

There’s something else, too, something that he hasn’t let himself examine. It wouldn’t be fair to Jared or Gen. He’s caught himself a few times the last couple of days, looking when he shouldn’t look, stealing glimpses of an intimacy that doesn’t belong to him. This, though, Gen’s hair tickling his chin, Jared’s breath warm on the back of his neck: this is his. For a little while – for the rest of the trip, maybe, the few days that remain – he can have this.

He’s thoroughly awake now, though, and logistics intrude. He needs to get a fire started if he wants coffee, and there’s a maintenance shed set off a ways from the parking lot that he wants to raid for tools and maybe gasoline, if there’s a lawnmower. He never got that scrubdown in the lake he wanted yesterday, either, because Jared and Gen... Well, he just never got the scrubdown he wanted. 

Cautiously he extricates himself from between them. Gen moans when he sits up, but she settles down again once he spreads the top sleeping bag back over her. Jared’s breathing doesn’t even change.

Looking at them, Jensen finds himself blinking at tears. The hell? He rubs at his eyes, and then he gets himself out of the tent as fast as the tangle of feet and blanket will let him. 

He goes down to the lake and strips to nothing, because there’s no Gen to see him now. He soaps himself up and rinses himself off, and he swims back and forth along the shore a couple of times just to stretch out a little. 

He stops for a breather and just stands, neck-deep. For a moment it’s nice, feeling at the squishy ground between his toes. The longer he stands there, though, the more he feels the quiet seeping into him, as sure and as dangerous as the cold. There’s no sound but a few birds chattering. The 4Runner and the tent are over the rise of the bank and out of sight. He has no proof that there’s anyone in the world but him.

He’s been in the water too long; he’s getting the chills. Hurriedly he wades back to shore. He has things to do, anyway.

By the time Gen stumbles out of the tent, Jensen’s made his raid on the maintenance shed, shifted things around in the 4Runner, and gotten his fire started and his water heated. He offers her a cup and the can of instant grounds, and she mutters vaguely in his direction. Eventually she wanders off to do “girl things,” which Jensen chooses not to question. 

This time, it feels almost natural when Jared crowds into Jensen’s space again like he did yesterday, shoulder to shoulder. Later in the day it’d be weird, but somehow isn’t yet, because Jared was spooned up behind him only half an hour ago.

“Seriously, it’s going to rain,” Gen says. She sidles up on Jensen’s other side, his arm reaches out and pulls her in of its own accord. 

“It better rain,” Jared says. 

It will. Already it feels like the air’s sweating, it’s so humid. “Let’s get on the road,” Jensen says. “If we’re in for a storm, I want to get as far as possible before it hits.”

\--

Within an hour they pass the _Welcome to New Mexico_ sign. By mid-morning the damp tension that’s been hanging over them for more than a day has gathered into a darkening front to the east, visible when they’re on the flat or cresting a hill. It’s still a long way off, but it’s building.

“Hey,” Jared says, “aren’t there Anasazi ruins up around here somewhere?” Because seriously, when are Indian ruins not cool?

Jensen shoots him a look, but it must say something about how long they’ve been on the road, how far they’ve gotten from civilization and all they left behind in it, that Jensen answers anyway. “Yeah, maybe. You wanting to take a look?”

Jared shrugs. “I’ve never been up this way before.”

Jensen rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips. “We’re not going to go look at ruins, Jared.” 

“Just a thought.”

Jared swaps Gen for the back seat and dozes for a while. Distantly he listens to the murmur of her and Jensen’s voices. That’s good, he thinks. Jensen’s hardly talked at all since they left. Since before that, even, not since that black bottomlessness in his memory that Jared’s thoughts carefully skirt. 

His next conscious thought is that the car has slowed down. He sits up and blinks. “Where are we?”

“Española?” Gen offers uncertainly.

Jared assumes that’s a town, but he doesn’t see one. They’re not even on the freeway anymore, although who knows how long ago they got off it; Jensen said something this morning about taking back roads to avoid Albuquerque. Now all Jared sees is long low hills against a solid slate-gray backdrop. “Pit stop?” He could use one, now that he thinks about it.

“We’re looking for shelter,” she says. 

“Everything okay?” The sky is nearly black, and Jared knows he didn’t sleep the day through. He doesn’t like the looks of this. If he were home in Austin, he’d be looking for tornadoes about now.

“Everything’s fine,” Jensen says. “We’re gonna find some place to hole up, and we’ll be fine.”

Jared peers around the seat. Jensen’s knuckles are white. “Sure we will,” Jared says. 

He doesn’t know _where_ they’re going to hole up, though. The road they’re on is the only sign of civilization he can see. Safer in the car than out of it, at least. Barring tornadoes.

“Lightning,” Gen says quietly, pointing. 

It’s already gone by the time Jared turns to look, but he starts counting anyway. At thirty seconds, he hears a distant rumble. “Thirty miles?” 

“What?” says Jensen. “No. It’s five seconds to a mile.”

“Are you sure?”

“Dude, boy scout here. I’m sure.”

“Uh, so, six miles, then.” Another bolt flashes towards the ground. Gen sucks in a breath.

It’s just a thunderstorm, Jared tells himself. He hasn’t seen one in a while; Seattle doesn’t get them often. Still, some dark clouds, some rain: a nice break to the heavy, lethargic heat. He used to love them when he was a kid, the blaze of lightning filling his eyeballs, the distant thunder getting right up close and quivering in his bones.

Except now it’s only him and Gen and Jensen and a fiberglass shell between them and the storm. The thought doesn’t exhilarate him the way it would’ve once. At least, not in the good way.

They keep driving, and Jared keeps counting the thunder after each lightning flash. At three miles, he gives up; the lightning’s coming too close together now to tell which roll of thunder goes with which strike.

Jared spots something in the distance, off to one side. It’s a reddish, rectangular blot on the dirt-and-tumbleweed landscape. “That looks like some kind of structure.”

“Watch for a road,” Jensen says.

A half a mile on, Gen points it out. Jensen makes the turn. The road’s gravel, potholey and ribbed from people driving over it too fast. Jensen slows down to a crawl just to keep the teeth from rattling out of everyone’s heads. 

The dark blot resolves into a barn. At first Jared can’t imagine what a person would do with a barn around here; this doesn’t exactly look like farming country. Then he spots the corral, and it makes sense. Someone kept horses here once. Not for a long time, though; one of the corral’s vertical posts leans crazily, and the barn’s white trim is gray and peeling. 

“Abandoned,” Jensen says. “Awesome.” Translation: no contagion here. Jared feels the same relief. 

Something starts patters against the windshield. Gen yelps.

“Hail,” Jensen says. 

They come up on a driveway to the barn, and Jensen slows to a stop. There’s a gate across the driveway. A rusted chain holds it closed, and Jared can make out a padlock. 

“Right,” Jensen says. “Off road it is. Jared, you think you can get to the toolbox?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the wire cutters and see if you can cut that barbed wire and pull it aside. I don’t want to puncture a tire.”

“Aye-aye,” Jared says. He hops out of the car. Instantly his skin is stinging with hail pellets. They’re not that big. He hopes they stay that way. Around back, he pops the rear door and digs around Jensen’s toolbox, which is as well and as redundantly stocked as the first-aid kit, and thanks be to Jensen for that.

The fence posts are already sagging. Cutting the barbed wire would be an easy job if it weren’t for the thunder rolling through him almost constantly and the lightning flashes sneaking right up on him, it feels like. Not to mention the hail, still pelting down on him.

As soon as Jared’s cleared the wire, he waves Jensen through and across the shallow ditch between the road and the fence. There’s a soft scraping sound as the undercarriage runs over a tumbleweed, and then the 4Runner’s up one the other side. Jared hops back in. “It’s hailing harder!” he says.

They drive the last couple of hundred feet to the barn. “Is it even grounded?” Jared asks. “We might be better off in the car.” 

“It had power once,” Gen says, pointing lines just visible around the structure’s other side. “We should be fine.” At Jared’s look, she smirks shakily. “Jensen’s not the only one in this car who was a scout.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jensen says. 

“What?” Jared asks.

Jensen doesn’t answer; he just drives right on through the barn’s gaping door. Oh. Right. Jensen pulls to a stop inside and says, “Come on, let’s see if we can get that shut.”

Jared follows him out. The barn door hasn’t been used in who knows how long; the wheels seem to have rusted in their track. Jared finds he doesn’t mind. The barn’s dark enough inside; close the door and it’d be pitch black.

“Give it up, man,” Jared says. “Doesn’t matter anyway. We’ll be fine.”

Jensen hesitates, and finally he nods. 

“Great. I’m gonna take a leak.” Jared thumbs towards the great outdoors. Jensen waves him off, and Jared goes. Not far, because this is not the kind of weather a guy enjoys pulling his dick out in, but enough so he feels vaguely sanitary. 

When he gets back, he finds that Gen has dragged the sleeping bags out onto the floor of the barn and is sitting on one of them, working on opening a can of tuna by the light of the Coleman lantern. Jensen’s already eating out of his can. Jared drops down next to Gen. “Hungry?”

“We skipped our lunch stop, looking for someplace to stay. That highway Jensen had us on? There was _nothing._ ”

“I got you here, though, right?” Jensen asks.

“Yeah, you did,” Gen says, patting his knee.

“Damn straight,” Jensen says. 

Jared nabs a couple of tuna cans for himself. For a while, the only sounds inside the barn are the soft rattle of forks against cans and the harsher clatter of hail on the roof. Outside, thunder continues to crack. 

When Jared finishes both his cans, he collects everyone’s and stashes them in the garbage sack. Coming back, he wedges himself between Jensen and Gen. That same feeling washes over him from the other morning, that inexplicable feeling of peace: here are his people, right where he wants them. He leans over and kisses the top of Gen’s head. 

And then, because it’s the obvious, the only symmetrical thing to do, he leans over the other way and presses his lips against Jensen’s hair, just above his ear. 

Jensen stiffens. On Jared’s other side, he hears the intake of Gen’s breath.

Jared has a choice, here. He doesn’t have to articulate the options; he already knows what they are and which he’d rather choose. It isn’t only his choice, though. He pulls far enough back to look Gen in the eye. She bites her a lip. 

Thunder rolls through Jared, catching his breath in his lungs. 

Slowly, minutely, Gen nods, and Jared lifts his eyebrows. She has to be sure. He - _they_ \- can’t do whatever they’re about to do unless she’s sure. She nods again, more firmly this time, and she gives his arm a squeeze for good measure. Okay, then.

Jared shifts his weight as he turns to Jensen. Jensen hasn’t moved. He follows Jared’s eyes as Jared scoots around so he’s at a decent angle. Jared reaches up with his hand like he’s always wanted to do, always, except the timing was never right, and he caresses Jensen’s jaw. “Can I kiss you?” he asks.

“Wh-what?” 

Jared waits. When Jensen doesn’t say anything else, just keeps staring, frozen and wide-eyed, Jared leans in and kisses Jensen’s mouth. Jensen’s lips are soft and full and everything Jared always knew they’d be. He waits one beat, two, and then he pulls a few inches back.

Jensen’s breath stutters. Finally, he manages, “What was that?” The words are warm puffs against Jared’s lips.

“Do you want me to stop?” 

There’s a long pause. Jared pulls back further. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses Gen: alert, intent. In front of him, Jensen’s eyes are full with some emotion that isn’t disgust or shock or even lust; something painted as brilliantly as any of those but interlaced with subtler, more complicated hues. 

“No,” Jensen whispers brokenly. “God, please, don’t stop.”

This time, when their lips meet, Jensen kisses back. Jared was aiming for gentle, but Jensen clearly is not. He mouths hungrily at Jared; his hands clutch at Jared’s arms and the fabric of his t-shirt. “Hey,” Jared whispers, pulling back for a breather. “Jensen?”

For a moment Jensen only stares, eyes wide, and then he scuttles backwards. “I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely. He turns to Gen. “God, I’m sorry.” Then, before Jared can move, Jensen does possibly the most un-Jensen-like thing Jared has ever seen: he draws his knees to his chest, wraps his arms around them, and buries his face against his arms. His shoulders begin to shake.

Jared looks to Gen for guidance. By her expression, she’s as freaked as he is. After a moment, she scoots towards Jensen. Jared cautiously follows. He’s the one who did this, apparently; he doesn’t want to make it worse.

“Jensen?” Gen says gently.

“I’m sorry,” Jensen says again. The words are muffled against his legs.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she says. When Jensen doesn’t respond to this, Gen lays a hand on his shoulder. “Jensen, what is it?”

Jensen lifts his tear-streaked face to look at her. “I’m fine,” he says. His voice breaks on the second word.

Gen laughs, a little shakily; it sounds like she’s about to cry herself. “You are, are you?”

“I can’t... I have to protect you. I have to take care of you.”

She palms his cheek. “We can take care of you, too, can’t we?”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “There’s no one else. You’re all that’s left.”

Oh, God.

“I have to take care of you,” Jensen repeats. Gen pulls on him until he’s leaning into her arms, and she holds him as he starts to sob openly.

They all come tumbling in, the memories Jared’s been hiding from: the bodies abandoned where they fell on the sidewalks, the sickly odor of death and panic that hung in the hallways and wafted from the windows, the sinking in his chest when all the lights went suddenly dark. Gen, hardly willing to let go of his hand. And Jensen, stumbling in the second day after the power went out, his eyes a thousand years old. 

“We’re not going anywhere,” Gen says. She’s crying too, now.

Jared knew it, then, before Jensen even opened his mouth. Jensen’s family was dead, every last one, or there’s no way he would ever have left them. _We have to go_ , Jensen said, and Jared could think of no reason in the world to disagree.

Jared scrambles across the dirt floor until he’s within reach. He reaches for Jensen’s neck and begins to rub up and down the back of it. “It’s okay,” he says. He knows it’s not true, it’s as meaningless as Jensen’s _fine_ , but he can’t help himself. “It’s okay, man. It’s okay.” He finds himself kissing Jensen’s hair again. Jensen doesn’t pull away this time. He clutches Jared’s arm and one of Gen’s hands, and he sobs, harsh and uncontrolled and broken. It’s the first time Jared’s seen him cry since this all started. 

Finally, when Jensen can’t seem to catch his breath, Gen starts to untangle herself. “Don’t go,” Jensen pleads, still holding onto her hand, and some small of fragile piece of Jared’s heart breaks.

“I’ll come right back,” Gen promises. Once Jensen lets go, she gets up and walks off to the car. She comes back with one of their towels, which she hands over to Jensen. “You wouldn’t let us pack any Kleenex,” she says.

Jensen coughs a laugh.

\--

The storm’s still raging when Jensen finally calms down. Sometime when Gen wasn’t paying attention, it started to rain, and the sound of it on the roof is almost as loud as the hail was before. Jared gets the other two sleeping bags out of the car, and they arrange them on the barn floor in a big polyfill nest with the three of them at the center. They don’t talk. Eventually, gravity and the tired aftershocks of grief pull them down into a heap, and they sleep.

\--

Gen’s shoulder is stiff. Her lower back feels a little weird, too. Groggily she tries to push herself upright, but whatever she was bracing against gives way. She blinks at it. Oh. Jensen. He blinks back at her. “Hi,” he says. His voice is still a little rough.

“Hi,” she says.

“Do you want to, um...” He looks around, maybe for a place to brace _his_ hands.

“Here’s good,” Gen says, adjusting herself so her shoulder’s at a better angle. She ended up as the middle of the sandwich this time, so she’s mostly lying on and against Jared and is just far enough away from Jensen to see his face. She pulls his arm down over her, and he watches her do it.

“Mm,” mumbles Jared at her back.

“So what now?” Jensen asks.

It’s still raining, Gen notices. “We wait until Jared wakes up,” she says, “and we try again. If you want.” She watches Jensen carefully. 

His eyes are still red, but they stay dry. After a moment, he nods. “Okay.”

“Or we could wake him up now...”

Jensen chuckles. It’s been a long, long time since she’s heard that sound. “Let him sleep.”

So instead Gen nestles against Jensen and breathes him in, the sweat and the green tang of lake water and the basic animal odor of humanity that hangs around all three of them more and more. She presses her hand to hischest and finds his sternum. Through his t-shirt, she follows it up to his collarbone traces it with her thumb. She’d kind of like to lick it, she thinks, although possibly when he’s cleaner. She’s never let herself think about him like this before. Jared was hers before she ever met Jensen, and Jared was more than enough. 

Then again, her school, her city, her life has been snatched away from her in the space of two weeks; getting Jensen Ackles to savor in return is the least the universe can do. Right?

She’s almost asleep again by the time Jared stirs. Gen does sit up this time, so she can give Jared a kiss. “About time you woke up. You hungry? Need to pee?”

“No, I’m good, thanks,” Jared says, blinking. “Why?”

“Because we’re going to have sex with Jensen now.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jared asks. He starts to grin.

The making out is unhurried this time – on Jensen’s end, too. There’s none of his frantic desperation from before. Each of them kisses him in turn, and it’s thorough kissing, but it’s careful, like their collective crying jag earlier has left them all too sensitized for more. Eventually hands stray and items of clothing are lifted off or pulled down. Touches are exchanged along with the kisses, questing, gentle.

Gen wondered a little if this was as far as things were going to go, this near-platonic exchange of heat and comfort, but after a while it’s clear Jensen’s dick wants in on the action. Jensen catches her looking down and suddenly, bizarrely, he blushes. He props up his knee to hide himself.

And that? That is just not necessary. Gen scoots up to him and reaches over. She slides a palm low across his belly and down, and he shivers. “You want?” she asks, gripping lightly.

Jared’s watching the exchange with his whole body, it looks like. “Go ahead man,” he tells Jensen. “This one’s all yours.”

Wide-eyed, breathless, Jensen says, “Okay.”

He’s already thick and full in her hand. It takes just a few short strokes before he comes with a shudder, gasping hotly against her shoulder. 

“My turn?” Jared asks, nuzzling her neck, and she is not some assembly line, but what she is is plenty revved up, and it is high time someone with a dick did something about it. She sprawls out on her back, and gives him the eye. His grin is eager and filthy and brilliant.

But there’s Jensen, too, looking on and suddenly bereft. “Hey,” she croaks, because she’s smooth like that when she’s horny. She reaches vaguely for Jensen and keeps reaching until he scoots close enough to touch. She grips his hand. “Do you want to take this?” Which _this_ , she isn’t sure – Jared or her or both.

“Just...” In the shadowed dimness of the barn, Gen can just glimpse a blush starting to rise. “Will you let me watch?” There’s a plea in his tone, but the look in his eyes is all hot-blooded want and not the least bit shy.

“Oh, _yeah_ ,” she says, and the way he grins back pushes her just that little bit farther. Then she’s too busy meeting Jared thrust for thrust to think of anything else, except every so often she catches glimpses of Jensen, eyes avid and shining in the dark. The thought flashes through her mind: _Shoulda done this sooner_.

Afterward, they all lie in a sweaty heap on top of the sleeping bags, catching their breath. Rain patters lightly on the steel roof. Through the barn door, the unnatural dark is deepening. It’s hard to tell, with so much heavy cloud cover, but Gen figures they’re well into late afternoon now.

“We saddling up?” she asks. She hopes the answer is no. She doesn’t really want to move. Except possibly to put some clothes on, because between the damp in the air and the damp on her skin, she’s starting to feel a chill.

“Jared?” asks Jensen.

“What?”

“We got a solid day’s drive to Austin, I figure, or two if we want to take it easy. If we pick up a couple a couple of hours now, we’d be outside Austin by tomorrow night, no trouble, assuming the roads are still good.”

Gen marvels. It’s the most words Jensen’s said together since they left Seattle. Should have gotten him laid sooner. Gen giggles to herself, because giggling beats the alternative.

Jared sits up, draping his discarded hoodie around himself. “Whichever, I guess.”

Jensen gives him a sharp look, but what he says is, “We’re not rolling into Austin in the dark, so a few hours either day won’t matter much.” He peers up into the shadowed heights of the barn. “Not a bad set-up we have here, anyway.”

“Awesome,” Gen says. 

\--

This time, the others don’t ask Jensen if he wants to sleep with them. After dry clothes and food and other preparatory things, Gen and Jared both huddle down in the sleeping bag heap, and they just look up at him, expectant. And so he crawls into the heap and lets Jared drape an arm over his waist and pull him in. 

Jensen doesn’t cry. His tears have run dry. But once Gen’s settled in next to him, he grips her hand and holds on for dear life.

\--

When Gen opens her eyes, she finds Jensen only inches away, looking back. “You’re still here,” Gen whispers. “Don’t you have to get up and do... stuff?” She’s not actually sure what Jensen gets up to in the mornings before she manages to crawl out of bed, but she assumes it’s important.

Jensen shrugs minutely. “I guess not.”

“That’s nice,” she says. “It’s warmer when you’re here.”

He grins that show-stopping grin that had half the girls on campus asking Gen for his phone number. It occurs to her that, per current arrangements, she’s allowed to kiss it now. She scoots in and mouths at his mouth, working his lips open with her tongue. After moment she pulls back. “Ugh, morning breath.”

“Right back at you,” he says, grinning at her. Soon, though, the expression shifts into something less easy, less open. There’s a moment there where he looks at her like he’s shocked to find her _right there_ , and she figures they’re done, good-morning kiss over with. Then he leans in and kisses her again, wet and warm and not so shy anymore. There’s a confidence in it that Gen likes very much. 

Too soon she breaks it off; any longer and she thinks it might feel awkward without Jared awake and enjoying the action. She nestles down against Jensen’s chest, fingers splayed over his t-shirt. “So how’re you doing?”

She feels the force of his snort. She figures that’s answer enough. Eventually, he says, “How’d you do it?”

“Do what?” She doesn’t look at him. This sounds important, and she’s afraid if she looks, he’ll stop talking.

“When your parents... when they died in that car crash,” he says.

Gen closes her eyes. God, she wants to get this right, and she has no idea how. “It was awful,” she says.

He shifts closer so that his breath is warm on the top of her head. “Is it... less awful, now?” 

“It was a long time ago,” she says. Probably that doesn’t sound like an answer. “You just, you keep going, you know?”

“Do you ever, do you wish it was you?”

She squirms a little to get a look at him. “Shouldn’t you be asking whether I wish I was one of the ones who got sick?”

“Gen,” he begins, looking pained.

“Because, you know, why am I still here? I don’t have any family to miss me. Jared’s the only one who needs me, and he still...” Gen doesn’t say it out loud, for fear of jinxing it: _he still has his family_. In Austin.

“Not just Jared,” Jensen says sharply.

The sentiment is sweet, it is, and it stirs something in Gen’s chest that she didn’t know was there to be stirred. Still, she prods, “Wouldn’t you rather have your sister? Or your dad?” 

Jensen’s eyes squeeze shut, and she can see tears glistening on his eyelashes. “I’d rather the world wasn’t fucked, Gen, if that’s what you mean. I mean, yeah, I wish Kate were alive, and Dad, and Linnea even though we broke up a year ago, and Aunt Diane because she was awesome and my cousin Leo even though he was only fifteen and already on a fast track to hell. Yeah. I wish that.” His voice has gone gravelly and he swallows. “But I can’t _trade_ people for other people, like you’re saying.” His head shakes. “I can’t. I can’t.”

“Well, I can’t, either. And _I’m_ fucking glad you’re here, okay?” She pokes him in the chest, hard. 

“Okay.” He pulls her in against him, his breath shuddering. “Okay.”

\--

Jared groans awake and finds himself alone. He takes a moment to recognize where he is: musty old barn, daylight pouring in through the open door. Yesterday the air was heavy with humidity; today it feels clean and smells of sage brush and dirt baking dry in the sun.

Distantly he hears voices. He pushes himself to his feet and follows them, out the door and around the side of the barn. Jensen and Gen are sitting in the sun on a stack of weathered-gray two-by-fours, eating out of tuna cans with forks. Gen’s knee leans casually against Jensen’s knee.

It’s another one of those moments of decision, Jared dimly recognizes. He could decide now that he’s upset, his best friend and his girlfriend canoodling without him. It’s one thing to kiss Jensen himself and another thing to share Gen with him when Jared isn’t even around. Because Gen, he knows, enjoyed herself just fine yesterday, flushed and bright-eyed as she massaged Jensen to the edge and over it. By the time she was on her back, urging Jared in, she was more than ready: no further prep required. 

But that same feeling keeps washing over him at odd moments: these are his people. These are both his people. 

There’s a good chance these are _all_ his people. He’s not thinking about that.

Then Jensen throws his head back and laughs like it’s just another brilliant day in the New Mexico sun, like there’s nothing bad in the world, and it takes Jared’s breath away. 

“Hey,” Jared calls, and starts walking over to them. He finds his mouth’s gone dry.

Jensen’s grin abruptly falls away, and suddenly he’s six inches farther away from Gen than he was before. “Hi,” he says. Gen turns to look at Jared, and boy does Jared know that look. It’s the one that says _Don’t screw up._

So he doesn’t. He gets close to Gen and kisses her good morning, just a few sweet seconds of   
_Hello gorgeous_ , and then he walks around to the other side of Jensen and sits down, crowding him enough in the process that Jensen scoots back over those lost six inches towards Gen. Jared leans in – it’s kind of funny watching Jensen’s eyes cross as he approaches – and kisses him just the same he did Gen. Or maybe a second longer, because kissing Jensen, bristly-faced and man-sweaty, hasn’t even come close to wearing out its novelty value. Then he pulls back and grins. “Hi,” he repeats.

“Hi,” says Jensen, hoarsely. Beyond him, Gen looks charmingly pink. Jensen clears his throat. “So, um, we should probably get a move on. Figure we can camp out near Sweetwater, which leaves us maybe another three hours tomorrow? I mean, we could punch it, get into the Austin outskirts tonight—”

“Tomorrow’s fine,” Jared interrupts. He gets up. “I’m gonna go grab breakfast.” He knows Jensen’s giving him another one of those sharp, thoughtful looks, and Jared is just not up to dealing with those now. Or never, really. Never is a good time. 

\--

The morning is an easy drive. Once they get on the highway again, Jensen gases up courtesy of an abandoned Volvo; it should be enough to get them to Lubbock, he hopes, without breaking out the spare gas can tucked in the back. Pretty soon after, he’s skirting the edges of Santa Fe. Santa Fe’s not so bad, not nearly so big as Salt Lake or Boise, and they leave it behind before too long.

It feels like something between the three of them has come unstuck. Jared still talks in these occasional cloudbursts of words and speculation and remembered Star Wars minutia that Jensen hasn’t cared about in years and, he suspects, Gen has never cared about at all, but the bursts feel more natural now. They’re just another part of the same climate as the silences that stretch in between – silences like the ones that fill the empty desert country Jensen’s driving through, rich with their own meaning, not uncomfortable. 

Gen reaches up from the back seat and pats Jared on the shoulder, and where before her fingers snatched at that moment of contact and disappeared, now they linger, brazen. And then, a few minutes later, it’s Jensen’s shoulder her hand lands on and squeezes. The warmth of the touch seems to soak past the sleeve of his t-shirt and right on through to the frozen core of him, still unthawed. 

A few hours in, they cross into Texas. Gen points out the sign to Jared, and Jared shrugs. By now, Jensen has maybe half an idea about what’s going on with Jared. Bringing it up doesn’t seem like it’d help, though, so he doesn’t.

They eat lunch in the car; it’s more comfortable traveling with the windows wide open than sweating it out in the futile shade of a rest stop. Every couple of hours they take a necessary pit stop to find some bushes, although given the landscape they’re driving through now, the bushes are mostly metaphorical. On one of the stopovers, Gen offers to drive again. Jensen tells her maybe later. He thinks he might mean it this time.

In mid-afternoon, Jensen begins the tedious business of navigating around the greater Lubbock area. He doesn’t like picking his way along the edges like this, down two-lane backroads and industrial avenues on which he might conceivably encounter another vehicle. It’s just that he likes a whole lot less the thought of going through the center of the city, risking traffic jams (damned unlikely) or roadblocks put up out of sheer malevolence (unlikelier yet). Everything is so _concentrated_ in a city: the living, the dead, and contagion. The very air must be tainted, he thinks, with his heart if not with his head. The water surely is. The farther out of it they stay, the better.

So he keeps on meandering, taking highways when he can if he thinks they head in the right direction.

Death is quieter out here on the periphery, less vivid. It’s too hot to expect anyone to be out on even an ordinary day, so there’s only the emptiness of the road – interrupted here and there by cars jutting off onto the shoulder, their drivers probably taken too suddenly by the plague to do anything but die where they sat – to remind Jensen what world this is. That, and the vise grip his own muscles have him in.

At one point, Jared reaches over to punch the radio on. Jensen slaps his hand.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, man,” Jensen apologizes, flushing. “Sorry. I’m a little... Just leave it off, okay?”

“I want to know,” Gen says. “If someone’s still broadcasting, I want to hear it.”

“Fine,” Jensen bites out. “Just... just keep the volume down unless you actually find something.”

But Jared doesn’t find anything. He seeks carefully through the entire FM band and then the AM band, and they get nothing but static, which harshes on Jensen’s nerves something fierce. Finally Jared gives up and turns it back off.

The question is, is there no electricity – not even generators? – to power the signal, or are there no human operators to send it? There have to be _some_ survivors, but Jensen supposes their energies are being applied elsewhere.

Every so often he or Jared or Gen spots a living person. They all wear dust masks that Jensen’s damn sure do them no good. They stare as the car goes by, and they don’t wave. 

As he comes up on a beige, blue-trimmed bungalow sitting on the edge of the desert, Gen gasps and points. An inflatable pool sits under a giant umbrella on the crisp brown remains of a lawn, and in the pool splashes a little girl, maybe five years old. 

“I didn’t think there were any kids left,” Gen whispers.

Jensen glances at Jared; from a holiday spent with the Padaleckis, he vaguely remembers a nephew that Jared was pretty fond of. Jared keeps his gaze fixed out the window and says nothing at all.

A woman sits outside the edge of pool, very still. Jensen has a horrible moment of wondering whether the she’s dead, but then her head turns to follow them as they pass.

After another half hour, they’ve left the straggling outskirts of Lubbock behind, and Jensen begins to feel like he can breathe again. He breaks down and turns on the A/C; they’re into serious summer heat now, and Jensen figures it’s either drain the gas a little faster using A/C or go through their entire bottled water supply to compensate for what they sweat out. The mood in the car improves immediately. Jared resumes his soliloquies with their pinball logic; Gen’s heat-lulled expression clears.

It could be all in his head, obviously, this change in the air he’s been feeling since yesterday. For now, though, every touch to his shoulder or his hand, the spontaneous kisses from Jared and Gen both this morning: it’s all proof that they’re still here, that _he’s_ still here. He wasn’t sure sometimes, before, staring down the freeway’s white-dotted line. 

\--

Gen mans the maps that evening and finds them another dammed-up lake not too far out of Sweetwater to camp by and cool off in. The weeds down the embankment are still stubbly from the law mow; the water at the bottom is tepid and murky. There’s nothing in it that appeals to Jensen, despite the heat, and he declines to go in. Jared splashes around a while. Gen eventually gives up on any kind relief from the heat, scrubs herself down with a rag and soap, and gets back out. She makes a point of not getting her hair wet this time, saying she’d rather it smelled like sweat than like the mud-and-algae biological funk of the reservoir.

Dinner happens at a lone picnic table. It’d be a pleasant enough meal except for the will-sapping heat that Jensen moved to Seattle to get away from and the fact that every plan he tries to make, Jared interrupts.

“We have no idea where your family might be,” Jensen tries to tell him. “We need a plan. Recon.”

Jared keeps turning the conversation aside, and it’s all crap about club badminton his sophomore year or movies he likes or doesn’t like or has no firm opinion on. Jensen has an idea what this is, though, these constant detours, so he keeps on ignoring Jared and then picking up where he left off each time Jared runs out of steam. 

When Jensen happens to glance over at Gen, she looks fit to strangle them both.

Eventually Jared runs out of words, and then Jensen finds that he has, too. Then it’s just the three of them sitting around the picnic bench, Gen’s eyes half-shut and Jared’s mouth fallen slack, all of them as still and golden from the sunset glow as if they’d been caught in amber. For a moment, Jensen lets himself believe that this won’t ever end, that if there is nothing else in the world but them, there is at least all three of them, always.

He finds himself staring: at Jared’s mouth, soft-lipped and so rarely still, at Gen’s dark eyes, huge with feeling, and his chest squeezes with something he can’t articulate even to himself, much less say aloud. He wants a piece of this amber for himself, to take with him and hide in some deep inner pocket of his memory. He wishes he knew how to ask for it. He wishes he even knew what to ask for.

Instead, he says, “I’m going to bed. We need an early start tomorrow.”

\--

Jensen wakes up when the sky is still the sky pre-dawn gray, the air only comfortably warm and rich with dust and sage. Sometime during the night, he and Jared collapsed in around Gen so that now she’s spooned up against Jensen with her face to Jared’s chest, and Jared’s octopus arms enclose them all. 

Jensen should get up, should roust them both and drive into Austin and discover what’s become of it, but they’re like the pull of gravity, these two. He doesn’t have the energy to pull himself out of that planetary well, not yet.

His fingers are splayed over Gen’s stomach, flat and warm. His mouth is inches from her hair. He leans across those few inches and kisses it. He shifts his free hand away from Gen and onto Jared’s arm, and he thumbs lightly across it, letting the hairs tickle his skin. Neither of them stir, so Jensen lies still, touching and holding, and waits for dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

This is it. This is the day. Gen wakes up to murmurs passing over her head and rumbling through her from both sides. She’d lie there for a while, appreciating, except she remembers: today they find Jared’s family. So she wriggles a little to loosen the grip of arms laying over her and opens her eyes, and there are Jensen and Jared looking down at her. “Hey,” she says. The word clogs her dry throat.

Jensen bends to kiss her hair, and she feels Jared do the same. “Right,” Jensen says, and pushes away and up.

This time, Jared keeps his mouth as Jensen reviews the plan: gas up, find a map, go to Jared’s house. Gen doesn’t ask why they might need a map to find the house Jared’s family has lived in for ten years, and Jensen doesn’t volunteer the information.

They pack quickly. Gen’s on the ground putting the last of the tent pegs in their canvas bag when Jensen crouches to her level and kisses her, quick but soft. When he pulls back, his eyes are full of a longing way more complex than lust, but before she can say anything, he’s up and off again. Gen looks to Jared for confirmation – did that just happen? – and he shrugs. “He caught me earlier,” Jared says.

Gen thinks maybe she and Jared – and even Jensen, imagine that – should have talked about whatever this is they’ve been doing. Today feels like too late. 

Tomorrow, maybe, depending on how things turn out.

Once they’re on the highway, Jensen’s immediately looking for an abandoned car to siphon from. In the next little town they reach, they find one. Then they drive for a couple of hours, windows still down while the temperature’s bearable. Jensen is quiet. Uncharacteristically, Jared is, too.

Gen’s only been down to Austin with Jared a couple of things since they got together. She remembers it as huge and sprawling, green and muggy, a vast organic structure of concrete and steel sprouted from the hills She remembers smog and the chill of indoor climate control, everywhere, and the blaze of verdant, alien heat during those few rare scurries out of doors from building to car and back again. 

Those things are all still here. The asphalt arterials are here, sure; it’s the blood flow of traffic that’s missing. The stacks of apartment buildings, one behind another, on and on like frames in a beehive, are here; all that’s lacking is the bees.

It’s deserted.

This is a bigger city than Lubbock or Salt Lake, and Gen knows it marginally better. The chill she’s feeling now has nothing to do with air conditioning.

Jensen’s originally from near Dallas, she knows, but he’s been through Austin a few times to see Jared, and he seems to know where he’s going. They pull off the freeway onto a deserted frontage road, and Jensen stops at a gas station and makes his raid, coming back with a road map.

Gen wishes she could see any triumph in his face of a caper well-executed. It’d make this feel less like the nightmare she’s just woken up into.

Too soon, they drive down Jared’s street through Jared’s peaceful, tree-lined neighborhood. The towering pecan tree still stands on the corner lot. Jared took her there once to collect nuts and meet the neighbor, a frail-looking, white-haired lady with a smirk and a filthy mouth. 

They get within view of the ranch-style house Jared’s parents live in. “My dad’s car,” Jared whispers. He’s sheet-white.

Jensen drives slowly closer. The house windows are dark, just like the windows of every other house on the street. They’re closed, too, which is worse; darkness means no power, but closed means no one inside cares about temperature anymore. When Jensen pulls up to the curb, Jared’s half out the door before Jensen grips his arm and hauls him back in.

“What the hell?” Jared says.

Wordless, Jensen digs under his seat, pulls out a revolver, and holds it out to Jared.

“Are you fucking insane?” Jared cries, scrambling backwards. “What do you think I’m going to fucking do with that?”

Jensen’s words are low and certain. “You’re going to carry it, and you’re going to point it at anyone that doesn’t stop when you tell them to, and if they keep coming, you’re going to shoot them.”

Jared huffs, low and disbelieving, and then he’s out of the car and running up the sidewalk, empty-handed. 

“Damn it.” Jensen pushes out of the other door and strides after him.

And Gen, well, everything she has left to care about is barreling towards the Padaleckis’ front door. She doesn’t see any point in not following. By the time she gets up the sidewalk to the front door, Jared’s already banging on it and yelling.

“Do you have a key?” Jensen asks.

Jared pauses. “Shit.” He fumbles in his pocket for his keys, picks shakily through them, fits one in the lock, and turns. He pushes the door open.

It’s silent inside. The air is hot and stale. Rancid.

Jared bursts past Gen into the gloom. “Mom? Dad?” Gen suddenly hopes desperately that no one is here, because if someone is, and they’re sick, and Jared catches it _now_ —

Gen lets Jensen get ahead of her, his revolver firmly gripped in his hands, and she follows him inside – through the darkened hall, into bedrooms and bathrooms and the rec room. By the light of the windows she can see no one’s here, even if the stillness of the air, the unmoving silence weren’t enough to tell her.

Jared comes in from the back door. “Butch isn’t here,” he says. “They had to be okay if they took Butch, right? Nobody else...”

Nobody else would have taken the time to worry about the dog.

Jensen pushes past him into the yard, and comes back a moment later. “No graves.”

“Maybe they left a note,” Gen offers. “I’ll get the flashlights.”

\--

The chances of Jared’s parents leaving a note in his room seem low, but once Gen’s in there with a flashlight, she can’t make herself leave. Here’s Jared’s poster of _Casino Royale_. Here’s his Xbox, left behind for his brother last Christmas and sorely missed. Here is his shelf of personally customized Marvel action figures, the fruit of more hours of labor than Gen can imagine. Here’s his suit jacket that appears in the pictures of his cousin’s wedding out in the hall, though the suit’s too small in the shoulders now.

It seems longer than four days – or even two weeks, possibly a closer estimate – since she and Jared left behind their old life in Seattle. Now that old life stares out at her from walls and shelves and closet. It’s a foreign country, an alien planet.

“Here!” Jared yells from down the hall.

In the kitchen she finds him and Jensen squinting at a bright green flyer. Words are written across the back in Sharpie. “The elementary school,” Jared says. “There’s a shelter set up there.”

“Let’s go,” she says.

But when they get to the elementary school a couple of miles away, there are black quarantine ribbons around the outside and no one in sight.

“Do we yell?” Gen asks.

“I’ve been exposed more than you guys,” Jensen says. “I’ll go.”

Gen catches at his arm, and he gives her a smile that makes her want to cry. He leans down and kisses the top of her head.

“Screw this,” Jared says, and jogs around the car. When he comes back, he has the rejected revolver in hand – because obviously the thing to worry about after the pandemic is whether you might need to _shoot someone_. “Let’s do this,” he says.

“Okay,” Gen says, taking a deep breath. When both guys turn to stare at her, she says, “What, you thought I was going to wait in the _car_?”

So together all three of them march past the black tape. Inside, their footsteps echo down the hall. Lemony disinfectant floats like an oil slick over the pooling sweet-sick odor of death. There are lights on in the gym – generator power, maybe – and people, too, a few lying on cots, a few standing near the collapsed bleaches on one side.

They’re spotted. A middle-aged woman with curly hair bushing from her head turns to them and starts to approach. Suddenly her pace picks up, and when she gets close enough, she says in a harsh whisper, “Put those _away_.”

“Don’t get too close,” Jensen says. He doesn’t relax, but he doesn’t aim at anyone, either.

The woman snorts. “It’s over,” she says. “If you were going to catch it, you’d already be dead.”

“How long?” asks Jensen. “How long since the last case?”

“Six days,” the woman says, immediate and unhesitating.

“It could be a different strain,” Jensen says. “Right now, we could—”

“Six days, Jensen,” Gen says. “At some point we have to just take our chances.”

“And you think that point is _now_?” By his tone and his expression, Gen thinks he might actually need her answer. He needs someone to take the decision out of his hands.

“Yes,” she says firmly.

He swallows, and then he flicks the safety on and lowers the gun. On his other side, Jared does the same, and Gen’s breath starts to come a little easier. 

“My parents,” Jared says. “My brother and sister – they said they were coming here.”

The look the woman gives him isn’t sympathy – Gen suspects she doesn’t have any left – but it softens a fraction. “We have a list of the dead, if you’ll come with me.”

They follow her to an office, naturally lit by a window. She pulls out a battered stenographer’s notebook and holds it out to Jared. After a moment’s hesitation, he takes it and begins to leaf through the pages. Gen peeks around his arm. All she sees are names – page after page of them.

“Some were unidentified,” the woman said. “They died before we could ask.”

“And the living?” Jensen asks. “What about the survivors?”

“They’re mostly gone now. We’ve got a few left suffering from other things – untreated pneumonia, that kind of thing. But everyone who caught the bug is dead, and most everyone else who didn’t has left.”

“Left for where?” Gen asks.

The woman shrugs. “Wherever there is to go. St. Luke’s has been serving lunch every day. You might check there.”

Jared looks up, and tears sit unshed in his eyes. “They’re not here.”

“Don’t you have some record?” Gen asks. “A... a guestbook? Something?”

“The bulletin board,” the woman says.

It takes Gen and Jared and Jensen together half an hour to comb the layers and layers of messages thumb-tacked to the school’s bulletin board. There’s nothing that Jared can identify as being from his family.

“They’re not here,” he says quietly. “Maybe they never came here at all.”

Jensen bumps shoulders with him. “We’ll try St. Luke’s next.”

“We can get lunch,” Gen says, slipping her arm around Jared’s.

\--

It’s a quiet crowd huddled out on the lawn of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. No one gives the three a second glance as they approach: Jensen taking point in front, Jared in the rear rubbernecking the crowd seated at folding tables under portable canopies. Gen looks, too. She’s only met Jared’s folks a few times, though, and she’s not sure she’d even recognize them in this sea of grayed faces.

Eventually they come to a halt, halfway down the long row of tables, and Jensen glances back. “Anything?” Jared shakes his head. “Might as well eat, then.” 

The church is serving chili today, cooked on row of camping cook tops running on propane. “This is the last of the frozen ground beef,” says the man with the ladle. “It’s all thawed, now.”

“Who are all these people?” Jensen asks, nodding towards the tables.

“Survivors,” the man says, like that answers the question.

But apparently it does, because Jensen leads the way to the end of a table, a couple of seats down from anyone else. Gen sits across from him. Suddenly, the soft murmur of the crowd washes over her, nearly drowning her in sheer proximity. So many people, so close, all at once.

Jensen catches her eye. “Okay?” he asks.

This means it’s over, right? If Jensen’s okay sitting in this crowd of people, eating their food, then the danger must be past. It was easy enough telling him it was, a few hours ago; now, among so many strange faces, Gen can’t grasp it. But Jensen’s still watching her, sober, clear-eyed. That’s enough. That has to be enough. “Okay,” she says.

She hasn’t eaten a hot meal in over a week. She takes her first bite and closes her eyes to savor the flavors of onions and chili powder and red meat, which two weeks ago she’d have said she could pretty happily do without. The taste of it and the texture between her teeth feels like some piece of her world’s come right again.

Jared is less enthused. He’s not even looking at his bowl; every time someone stands up, his eye is instantly on them, and once it’s clear they’re no one he knows, he goes back to watching the street. “Eat,” Gen says, nudging him. “You need the calories.”

After a while, Jensen turns to woman nearest him and strikes up a quiet conversation. There are no personal questions, nothing about how many each of them has lost. Jensen only asks about other shelters, other people still in Austin, and whether the woman might know the Padalecki family. She doesn’t, but she names a couple of places and gives him rough directions. He nods and thanks her, and then he lets her retreat to her chili.

Before they leave, they stop at the church’s bulletin board, now hung just inside the church doors where it’s visible by the light of the windows. They scan through the notes. Jared insists on seeing every one himself before he finally agrees to leave. When he walks back out the door, his shoulders are slumped just a little bit more.

\--

They check several more emergency shelters, some of them permanent places for the homeless, others temporary, set up in churches and schools. Jensen does the talking. At every place they visit, he asks about other shelters, about any news of someone with Jared’s last name. He’s tireless, it looks to Gen, and she envies him for it. Somehow this running back and forth across Austin is more draining than those endless hours on the road. Gen squints at more illegible handwritten notes than she can count and scans hundreds of shell-shocked faces. 

They stop at a few houses, too, places belonging to Padalecki aunts and uncles and cousins and family friends. Most of the houses are empty. Gen quits going in, which she’s soon grateful for. At one house, Jared comes out and pukes his lunch onto the lawn. Jensen doesn’t, but he’s very pale. 

“What happened?” Gen asks, before she can think better of it.

“They’re still here,” Jensen says.

\--

By the time they’ve checked half a dozen shelters and crossed Jared’s last possible family member off the list, it’s late evening. They sit in the parking lot of an apartment complex that reminds Jensen a lot of Gen and Jared’s place back in Seattle: same landscaping scheme of concrete and asphalt, same style of economy walk-up, painted beige. It’s uncanny. It feels like they’ve never gone anywhere at all.

There was no one here, either. By the smell of the apartment, someone was sick here, maybe they even died, but there are no bodies and no evidence of where any survivors might have gone.

“What now?” Gen asks. She’s slumped against the seat, eyes half closed.

Jensen breathes deep. There are still shelters they haven’t visited, other gathering places they’ve heard of but haven’t yet had a chance to check. There’s still a hope of finding some member of Jared’s family alive.

But Jared won’t push to keep looking; he hasn’t said a word in over an hour, and right now he’s staring sightlessly down at nothing at all. Gen’s clearly exhausted, and Jensen is, too, and it makes no sense to press on tonight. If Jared’s family is out there, then they still will be tomorrow.

If. Jensen hasn’t let himself consider that word too hard yet. 

Instead, he says, “We gotta find some place to bed down for the night. We could head back to Jared’s place, it looked clean—”

“No,” Jared says. His gaze is fixed on his knees. “I can’t go back there.”

“Okay,” Jensen says. “It’s okay.” 

Logistically, it makes more sense to find someplace close – it’s not like this city doesn’t have a few thousand dwellings with no one dwelling in them anymore. Jensen finds he doesn’t care. He wants fresh air a hell of a lot more than he wants a bed in a stale, empty house. 

“We’ll get out of town,” he promises. “Gimme the map.”

They’re not far from a wildlife refuge, it turns out. Jensen gets them there in twenty minutes. Jared doesn’t say a word the entire drive. They race the darkness getting the tent up and collecting firewood, and Jared works as hard as Jared or Gen, but when they finish and settle on their sleeping bags and Gen and Jensen open their cans of edibles, Jared just stares into the fire. The flickering light puts more life in his eyes than Jensen’s seen all day.

“Hey,” he says, nudging Jared with his shoulder.

“Hey.”

“We’ll keep looking,” Jensen says.

Jared doesn’t say anything for a while. Jensen focuses on the press of Jared’s shoulder against his, the heat transferred across the layers of two cotton. 

“We aren’t going to find them,” Jared says. He turns to meet Jensen’s eyes for the first time in hours. “We knew that, right? Before we even left Seattle, we knew they were dead.”

“Jared,” Gen says. She’s curled up against Jared’s other side. She reaches over to rub his arm.

“I knew,” he says. “I mean, what are the chances? Survival’s like two percent, wasn’t that what they said on the news?”

“We’ll keep looking,” Jensen repeats. 

Jared’s eyeing him, gently puzzled. “They’re not out there, man.” He shrugs, like this is an inconvenience, something on par with failing a test and getting a flat tire in the same day. 

“Jared,” Jensen begins, but his feeble promises catch in his throat. There’s only one thing left Jensen can think of to do. He closes the six inches between them and kisses Jared. A shudder runs through Jared, and he gives a moan that might be lust and might be grief, and then he’s clutching Jensen’s shoulders with both massive hands and searching Jensen’s mouth with his tongue like a starving man searching for a crumb.

After ten seconds or so Jensen pulls away. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey.” He gasps a little, catching his breath as he takes in the fact that he might get to have this one more time. The next moment, he nearly chokes; he can’t be grateful that Jared’s family might really be gone. He _can’t_. Jared has to be wrong.

Tears well in Jared’s eyes, and when he speaks, hitching little pauses punctuate his words. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“You’ve got us,” Jensen promises. That, at least, is a promise he and Gen can hold to.

“Yeah,” Gen says. She pushes up onto her knees and kisses Jared, and Jared kisses back, reaching up to tangle his fingers in her hair.

It’s contact Jared seems hungriest for, and Jensen and Gen give it to him. They’re not always graceful about it, because sometimes three sets of elbows is two sets too many, and sometimes three mouths is one mouth too few, but Jared doesn’t seem to mind. Eventually Jensen’s timing his strokes on Jared’s dick by the sounds Jared’s making, and when Jared finishes, Jensen feels something clenched tight in his chest release.

“You should,” Jared begins. He’s swaying where he sits, coasting on the combined endorphins of sex and touch and grief. “You have to take care of Gen.”

“I’m fine,” Gen says, shaking her head. There are tears in her eyes again.

“Please?” Jared looks between them, muzzy and pleading. “You can’t... it’s just us. We have to take care of each other. And...” He sniffles, and then he smirks at Jensen. “And you already used me up, man.”

“Okay, if...” Jensen glances at Gen. The smile she gives him is watery but raunchy all the same. “Okay.”

“I can warm her up for you, though, if you want.”

That’s how it is that Jensen learns by the light of a campfire the faces Gen makes while Jared’s fingers work their were way into her. He learns the giggle, high and out of breath and a little bit desperate, that she makes just before she demands that someone get in her and finish her off. Apparently, that’s going to be him this time.

“You good?” Jared asks, palming over Jensen’s erection, which has been building on each of Gen’s tiny gasps.

Jensen swats him away, because he’s not going to hold out much longer if Jared touches him like that again. Gen’s waiting. She gets her hands on his hips and guides him on top of her.

There’s something missing here. “Do I need...?” His hand flails for the word he can’t find. “Condom. We need a condom.” He doubts he even packed any. 

“The pill,” Gen gasps, sharp and impatient. “I’m on the pill. You’re clean, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So come on, then.” She squirms invitingly beneath him. And this moment here, Gen gazing up at him with eyes fathomless and black, Jared looking on with keen interest – this moment belongs to Jensen.

And he takes it. He settles into Gen, and he was right about not lasting long, because the friction of just a few thrusts is enough to send them both over, one after the other. 

They end up all rolled together in a single drowsy heap. The night’s too warm to be lying tangled together like this, but neither Gen nor Jared seems inclined to move, and if they wanted to, Jensen’s not sure he would let them. They’re sweat-sour, all three of them, and ripe with the grime of travel and the salt flavor of sex, and Jensen doesn’t give a damn. He holds onto Jared, and Gen lies in the angle between them, and no one tries to let go.

As sleep overtakes him, Jensen finds himself nursing a bitter, black hope that Jared’s right. 

\--

Jensen wakes up to someone pushing at him. 

“Jensen!” 

It’s Jared, but Jared never wakes up before him. There is not a camping trip Jensen’s ever been on with him when Jared didn’t sleep until long after sunrise. When Jensen’s stayed with the Padaleckis on vacation, Jared’s likely to turn up, squinty and grumbling, around noon. So it makes no sense that Jared’s trying to shove him awake right now.

“ _Jensen_.”

“God, what?” Jensen screws his eyes open, and there’s Jared, hanging over him like an enormous hound who might lick Jensen into action if he lies there much longer. 

“It’s almost eight.” Jared pushes up into a crouch and rocks back on his heels. “Can’t believe you’re still asleep.”

Eight? “Me either,” Jensen says, struggling upright. It occurs to him that Gen’s not around. He is seriously the last one awake, what the hell. “What’s up? Gen get eaten by a bear?” As soon as the words are out, he wants to kick himself in the ass; once upon a time, that would have been a funny camping joke. Not anymore.

Jared doesn’t seem to notice. He licks his lips. Staring hard at the sleeping bag that’s barely keeping Jensen decent, Jared says softly, “I had an idea.”

“Yeah?” Jensen wonders if he’s supposed to guess what it is. If so, tough shit, because his brain is not functioning on that level yet.

“Yeah. Um. You know how my grandparents had that ranch, out where the old homestead was?”

“Vaguely.” 

“It’s shut up now - someone was leasing the land for cattle but they let it go a few years ago. It’s just some farm buildings and a bunch of nothing.”

“Okay,” Jensen says. He thinks he knows where this is going. 

“So maybe my folks went there? To get out of the city, away from everything. Maybe even some of my other family. Uncle Michel and Aunt Arlene? They live the closest. Does that... Do you think?” Jared asks like Jensen would know, like the world runs on the authority of Jensen’s instincts.

“It’s a good idea,” Jensen agrees cautiously.

“So we can go?”

“Dude, Jared, of course we can go. Let me just...” Jensen looks around, like something other than yesterday’s sweat-crusted t-shirt and shorts might appear if he just wishes for it. And something does, because Jared twists around and comes back with a pile of clothes. He proffers them with the flourish of a maitre d’ with a wine list. It’s the most Jared’s looked like himself since before they rolled into Austin.

“We’ll go check it out,” Jensen promises.

\--

They’re not on the road until nine-thirty. “I can’t believe I slept that long,” Jensen repeats as he slides into the driver’s seat.

“You just looked so peaceful,” Gen says.

\--

Jared hasn’t been to the family homestead in years and can’t remember how long it takes to get there, so Jensen gets on the highway Jared directs him to, and he waits for Jared to spot the landmarks that will guide them. They climb up and down rolling hills spotted with shrubs and the occasional oak tree. As they leave Austin behind, the openness of the country opens something in Jensen. He thought they’d been okay in the city, that he’d believed the danger was over, but still it’s a relief to see no sign of humanity beyond the road he’s driving down and the occasional ranch house or barn.

Jared’s watchful, tense, but there’s a light in his eyes that Jensen didn’t even realize was missing until now that it’s back. It comes to Jensen that Jared was telling the truth last night – he’d never believed his family was alive, but now, paradoxically, he does. 

Jensen wants to caution him; if Jared’s wrong, Jensen doesn’t trust that hope not break him. But it goes straight against the encouragement Jensen was trying to give yesterday, and anyway a cool, bloodless voice inside asks Jensen if he just doesn’t _want_ to find Jared’s family. So he keeps quiet.

An hour out, there are twenty minutes of confusion where Jared tries to sort out whether they’ve missed their turnoff. Finally he spots a huge lone boulder that he’s convinced he remembers, and they turn onto the road next to it and keep going.

They’ve been driving gravel roads for half an hour, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them, when Jared points to another, narrower lane. “That’s the driveway,” he says.

The gate hangs open, and Jensen drives through. He thinks the rusted chain hanging from it looks rustier in some places than others, like it’s recently been moved. He doesn’t mention it to Jared. Caution.

But they come up on a cluster of buildings, and as they approach someone comes out toting a shotgun, and Jared laughs. “It’s Uncle Michel,” he says, high and disbelieving and breathy.

“Oh, God, Jared,” Gen says. She grips Jared’s shoulder, and in the rear-view mirror Jensen can see the beginnings of tears.

Jensen brakes and turns off the engine. Jared tumbles out of the car and yells to the man, who lowers the aim of the shotgun and just stares. When Jared starts to approach, though, the shotgun muzzle lifts again. From the words Jensen can catch, it sounds like an interrogation is beginning.

He climbs cautiously out of the car. On the other side, he can hear Gen’s door swinging open. Slowly they come alongside Jared.

“Heard you were in Seattle,” Michel says.

“We were,” Jared says. “We drove.”

Michel considers that. “What is that, two thousand miles?”

Jared turns to Jensen, expectant. Jensen shrugs. “Something like that.”

“So, you...” Michel’s grip on his gun shifts. “You all been exposed.”

Jensen lifts his chin. “I was with my dad and sister to the end.”

Michel nods in sober acknowledgment.

Jared says, “Gen and I, a bunch of our classmates died. And at our apartment, the family next door...”

“I get you,” Michel says. “All of us, too. We’re exposed. And no symptoms?”

It’s Jensen who answers. “Guess we got the touch of God. Not even a cough.”

And that’s all it takes. Michel Padalecki sets the butt of the shotgun on the ground. His head swings side-to-side in sheer disbelief, and he breaks into a grin. “My God,” he says. “Jared, my God.”

\--

There are tears of grief as well as joy, once they finally get inside the house. Jared’s mom is there, and after she leaps up and hugs him as though she’ll never let go, she sits them all down and serves them water fresh from the spring. It’s no cooler than the bottled water Jensen’s been guzzling, and there’s a mineral tang to it he’s not used to, but still it’s the best thing he’s tasted in weeks.

It’s then that she tells them the news. Jared’s younger brother and sister are fine; they’re off with Aunt Carla doing something to what’s going to become the garden. Jared’s father, his older sister, and his sister’s family are not fine.

“It’s more than I have any right to,” Melanie Padalecki says, eyes welling up again. “Whole families gone, and I’ve still got Emily and Wallace. And you.” She grips Jared’s hands in hers, smiling feebly through her tears. “And you, too, Genevieve. Of course you’re welcome, I know it’s just you, isn’t it?” Gen nods. “And Jensen. Do you have anyone left?”

It’s a blunt, graceless question, but there’s kindness in her face as she asks it. “No.”

“Then you’ll stay with us, too, if you want. There’s plenty of land out here. Plenty of work to be done.”

“Thanks.”

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the offer, but he sees how Jared and Gen cling to each other, her half in his lap, joined by more than just the contact of skin on skin. Scenes like it used to be good teasing fodder, before; now it makes Jensen’s stomach churn.

He did what he promised. He brought Jared and Gen safely home. That’ll have to be enough.

Wallace, Emily, and Aunt Carla stumble in eventually, filthy and sunburnt, and there’s another round of hugs and explanations. Jensen even comes into a hug from Wallace, presumably on the basis of a six-hour stretch they spent together last year playing Katamari Darcy. The hug startles Jensen a little. 

Everyone filters outside, where dinner is potatoes blackened in the depths of the fire pit and salted for flavor. The mood is orders of magnitude less somber than the chili feed at the church yesterday. This is a house whose missing son has returned home. 

Jared has to tell the whole epic tale of their cross-country expedition. He sings Jensen’s praises, talking about how Jensen searched the city harder yesterday than Jared had the heart to, how Jensen packed the car and warded off potential disease vectors with a gun. Jensen sounds like some kind of hero, a tour guide through the arid landscapes of hell.

Jensen finds it all pretty embarrassing. This isn’t what he did it for. Jared keeps asking for clarification, and Jensen keeps having to say, “It’s your story, dude. Tell it how you want.”

Finally the topic shifts to Austin, and the spotlight on Jensen switches off. He finds he doesn’t need the specifics of how the plague spread through the city, not tonight. He gives himself over to the beguiling flicker of the fire.

Gen comes and sits next to him on the log that he’d claimed as his. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says.

“It’s weird, being with all these people at once.” Gen scoots up close, until they’re touching hip to hip. Putting his arm around her is less awkward than not, so he does. The motion feels stiff, though. Unnatural, which is bizarre given how much he’d like to lean down kiss away the tension pursing her lips.

Instead he says, “We saw a lot of people yesterday.”

“It was weird then, too.”

“You’ll be all right,” he says, and he knows it’s true. “The worst is over. You’re with family now.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation has moved to the story of Melanie, Wallace, and Emily’s flight from the city, and suddenly Jensen can’t bear to hear how it happens that so much of Jared’s family is sitting here around this fire. He starts to extricate himself from Gen. 

“Jensen?” 

“It’s okay. I just.” Gen’s eyes are huge and liquid in the firelit glow, and Jensen finds he can’t deny her at least a little of the truth, however selfish a truth it is. For Gen’s ears alone, he whispers, “I wish it was my dad talking right now.” She reaches out and grips his hand, and he can’t help himself; he leans over and kisses her hair. “I’m going to bed,” he says.

“ ‘Kay,” she says.

Jensen goes out front and sets up the tent by the last gleams of sunset. A tent feels a little weird now that the trip is theoretically over, but the house is dusty and grimy and stale with years of disuse, and the tent’ll keep the mosquitoes out. He lays out his sleeping bag and crawls in it, thinking that if the Padaleckis have a spring, maybe there’s a chance at a sponge-bath tomorrow.

It takes him a long time to fall sleep. He hasn’t slept alone since Seattle.

\--

Gen wakes up at some point way earlier in the morning than she’d like. She scowls at the light and the motion – but not the noise, because there isn’t any sound at all but that of three people breathing – and says, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Jensen sounds guilty. Gen opens her eyes, and from the smear of color that she can see, he _looks_ guilty. Before she can say anything, he whispers, “What are you doing here?”

It takes Gen a moment to remember where _here_ is. The tent. She and Jared left the fire and searched the house with a flashlight, looking for Jensen. He wasn’t on either of the musty mattresses in the house, so they came out to the car, and there was the tent, pitched in the driveway. They didn’t even talk about it; they just stripped to their underwear, out there under the indigo Texas sky, and crawled into the tent to collapse.

But now Jensen’s staring at her like she’s something foreign, if not altogether bad, a Ferrari in a lot of Ford Escorts. 

He asked her a question, though. “Sleeping,” she says.

His mouth snaps shut on whatever comment he was going to make.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

He glances towards the tent door, involuntary. Definitely shifty. “Thought I’d see about a bath.”

“Whatever,” Gen says. Later in the day she’ll be following that up. Not yet. “You can be gross another hour or so. Come snuggle.”

He’s not so far away that she can’t grab his arm, and when she tugs, he follows and settles down next to her. She kind of wants to do something fun, but she’s still too bonelessly exhausted to be frisky, so she just pulls his arm over her how she likes it and closes her eyes.

\--

Jensen’s gone the next time Gen wakes up, but she’s not really surprised. She wonders what he had in mind when he said _bath_. If asked right this moment, she couldn’t swear she remembers ever being clean.

She crawls up and out, taking care not to stumble over Jared’s ridiculous sprawling limbs. Outside, the air is already warm, a still-gentle promise of the midday heat. It occurs to her that maybe clothes are in order, so she shimmies back into the dirty ones from yesterday. Maybe just after the holy rite of _bath_ there can be the almost equally sacred ritual of _laundry_.

There’s no one at the fire pit, so Gen wanders inside the house. She finds the entire crowd in the kitchen, which has more light, via the eastern-facing glass door, than any other room in the house. “Genevieve,” says Melanie. “Jerky?” She holds out a king-size pack. “Jensen says you’re about sick of tuna.”

“Just about,” Gen agrees, taking a slice of jerky and biting into it. “Oh my God.”

Jensen looks up from his shadowy corner and flashes her a smile that dims almost as soon as it appears. Something’s definitely up with him. She’ll have to get him alone later and figure out what it is.

“We were just talking about sleeping arrangements,” Melanie says. “When it gets cooler, you know, you don’t want to be sleeping out in that tent. You and Jared can have the back room, if you want, sweetie.” Melanie gives her a fond smile. Gen realizes she and Jared have won their own room, just like that, although last Christmas his mother had located Gen quite firmly in the Austin house’s guest bedroom. For some reason, Gen blushes.

Melanie continues. “There aren’t a lot of rooms in the house, although I suppose there’s the barn, but for now we were thinking that Jensen could bunk with Wallace and Michel? Jensen, what do you think? Or you could just take the living room if you wanted. It sounds like you’ll be up before everyone, anyway.”

Gen didn’t even think of Jensen. She didn’t even _think_ of Jensen. She looks anxiously at him, searching for eye contact, some shared understanding, but he stares at the floor and shrugs. “Either way.”

Gen feels like Wile E. Coyote, ten feet past the edge of the cliff and just now noticing. It’s not like anybody’s said anything about breaking up this all-three-of-them thing they have going, but nobody’s said anything about keeping it, either. Gen hasn’t even given it any thought.

She didn’t believe they’d ever get here, is the thing. Two thousand miles of empty highways convinced her that they were all there was. And now she’s here, she and Jared and Jensen, and she hasn’t got half a clue what happens now. 

She doesn’t like the look of Jensen, though. She doesn’t like the conclusions that she’s beginning to think he’s drawn.

She needs to talk to Jared. And Jensen, God, definitely Jensen, but first Jared.

\--

Jared wakes up eventually and wanders into the kitchen. Gen immediately corners him, and Jensen figures that’s his cue.

He’s thought it out, and he talked it over with Michel, too. The Padaleckis and company have a pretty decent start out here, but what they don’t have is tools, gasoline for the generator, food, and a thousand and one short-term and long-term comforts. It’s going to take quite a few raids to Austin to get the place going.

Jensen figures that’s where he comes in. He doesn’t know Austin all that well, but he’s decent with a map, and he’ll do okay hunting supplies. Likely Michel and Carla will make runs, too, but either way it’ll keep Jensen out on the road. And when he’s satisfied Jared and Gen and all them have their fresh start, well, he’ll say adiós. Maybe there’s a fresh start out there for him, too, but if not there’s the road. There’s a lot of it he hasn’t driven yet.

So he packs up the tent – he doesn’t think Jared will begrudge it to him – and cleans out the 4Runner. A lot of trash has accumulated in five days, but he tries to sort it out into _burn_ and _compost_ and _reuse_ , because conservation is more important than ever in this world he lives in now.

About the time he finishes and starts thinking about going to say his farewells, Jared and Gen come to him.

“Where are you going?” Gen asks, like she did this morning in the tent, only sharper, more urgent.

“Thought I’d make a run into the city. You know you guys have barely a week’s worth of provisions?” There’s no time like the present to start addressing that, he figures.

“‘Us guys’?” Jared repeats.

“Jensen,” Gen says. She walks up to him and lays her hand on his arm. “You... are you leaving us?”

“Just for supplies,” Jensen says. He supposes that’s what’d be called a literal truth.

“It feels like you’re leaving us,” she says. She always was too wise by half. Uncanny. He couldn’t live with a woman like that, he’s sure of it.

“You’ll be fine. You’re here, aren’t you? I got you here.” He nods to Jared. “We found your family.”

“Jensen,” Jared says, sober. He takes a step forward, into Jensen’s air, and he does something he’s never done before, not even when he groped at Jensen’s dick or had his tongue halfway down Jensen’s throat. He folds his hand around Jensen’s, and there’s nothing best-friendly about it. “Do you not want us?”

Jensen laughs, soft and low. Gently he says, “We’re not on vacation anymore, Jared. Nobody wants to hear about the time you slept three to a bed. You’ve got your family and your girl. It’s time to live in the real world.”

Jared laughs, too, sharp and bitter. “Haven’t you noticed? There _is_ no real world anymore.”

“And you?” Gen sidles in by Jensen, close enough to touch. She peers up at him, and he can feel those dark curious eyes stripping him bare with just one glance. “What do you have?”

Damnit, he can feel tears scorching his eyes. He sucks in a breath, but no words come with it.

Gen’s looking a little damp around the eyes, too. “Jared and I, we’ve never done this three-people thing before. We don’t really know how it goes. But, Jensen.” She takes Jensen’s other hand and twines her fingers through his. “If you want to keep us, just, just say.” She musters a thin smile. “Because we kind of want to be kept.”

Jensen swallows around the ache in his throat. “No, you don’t. Not really.”

“Really,” Jared says. Gen squeezes Jensen’s hand.

He can’t believe it. He’s sure it can’t be true. But he can’t not take the chance, either. He nods.

“Thank God,” Gen says, and plasters herself against him. Jared steps in and wraps his arms around them both. Jensen maybe gets Jared’s shoulder a little damp, but he can’t even feel bad about it, not given the way Jared’s eyes are watering, too.

When they all finally untangle, somehow Jared and Gen are still holding his hands. “So you should come meet the family,” Gen says, tugging gently. “You know, a real introduction. They might as well find out now, because there’s no way we’re sleeping in some musty room without you.”

And maybe Jensen’s fresh start isn’t out there somewhere. Maybe it’s right here. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

So he lets them lead him by the hand, one on each side, and together they walk back to the house.

[THE END]

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you'd like to leave feedback but would rather do it on LJ, the LJ post is [here](http://snickfic.livejournal.com/344396.html).


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